Insanity

Forever has insanity plagued our lives. From the beginning of those out of the norm were labeled out of their minds. We look back at the old chiefs and medicine men and what do we see? Men who must have lacked just a few brain cells to think up those crazy ideas. And we'd hate to be one of them. None of us want to be labeled crazy, out of our minds. Insane! It is the one constant fear in humans. It's what is hiding under our beds, in our closest, at ages so young we still have night lights. It causes us to scream, hide, call for some one else to come help us fight it. Just one person to tell us that we didn't imagine things and we are not indeed losing

our minds. But the truth is the real meaning of insanity is being lost.

If I asked most people about insanity the image of a person, in a straight jacket, bouncing of padded walls, would jump to mind. They might not admit it for fear of being politically incorrect, but the image is a general association with insanity. Yet, most people, who suffer from insanity, live every day to the fullest--in society. In 2001 the movie A Beautiful Mind took viewers on the journey of John Nash's battle of schizophrenia. As a professor at MIT, Nash was recruited by the CIA as a code breaker for the Defense Department. The director of A Beautiful Mind uses clever narrative devices to show the audience the world from Nash's perspective and views see how the Cold War paranoia fuels and shapes Nash's schizophrenia. Nash was a mathematician able to solve problems that baffled the greatest of minds. After years of struggling and finally overcome his mental illness John Nash said, "I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that great mathematicians suffer from maniacal characteristics, delirium and symptoms of schizophrenia." He did not fear his insanity, but accepted it and over came it.

In the movie Aviator, out just this past year, tells the story of aviation pioneer Howard Hughes during the late 1920s through the 1940s, when Hughes was directing and producing Hollywood movies and test flying innovative airplanes he designed and created. He, like John Nash, had a brilliant mind. He was able to see sheets of blue prints in his mind, in a instant, and be able to tell what a problem was and on which sheet it would be found on. However, he suffered from hypochondria and persisted that he was likely to become ill, often involving symptoms when illness wasn't present, and persisted despite reassurance and medical evidence to the contrary that illness was likely. He saw dirt in clean water, and went so far that he refused to use soap that wasn't of his own. In 1944 he had a mental breakdown and locked himself in a small private theater for weeks. In 1958 Hughes suffered another mental breakdown, one he never fully recovered from.

These are true cases of insanity. And while I can not promise you that Hollywood played every thing to the truth, Hughes and Nash both suffered from a type of mental illness. People are under the impression that people with any type of insanity can not function in society. However, even people that weren't born with money or excellent math skills, can participate in society while suffering from mental insanity. My grandfather, for example, was the breadwinner of a family