For decades, mental health professionals have reminded anyone willing to listen that infirmities of the mind are underrepresented in popular culture. They point to a paucity of pithy portrayals in film, literature, television, puppet shows, and motivational seminars. How, they ask, will maladies of irrationality ever shed their stigma, (to say nothing of the cloudy cloaks of ignorance surrounding them), until awareness, like sunlight succeeding a deluge, warms the landscape? A handful of well-known advocacy groups; YABA (Young American Bipolar Association), DABA (Deranged American Benevolent Association), and DEW (West End Dyslexics), have lobbied tenaciously to insinuate mental health awareness into all aspects of our culture, if culture is really the right word. Recently they scored a major hit in that universally feared arbiter of societal acceptability, the SAT.

Savvy marketers everywhere understand that branding is an essential element of market domination, sustained growth, and “share of mind”. Put simply, your brand is your customer’s opinion of you, a complete set of assumptions which influence every interaction.

Much has been made about the relationship between mental illness and artistic creativity. To test this theory, I’ve assembled some of the most famous first lines in fiction. Your challenge is to match them with their book of origin, the author of that book, and – this is the important part – the mental illness that prompted the passage. For example: First Sentence: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” Book: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Author: Hunter S. Thompson Mental Illness: Chemical dependency & narcissism. Easy, right? Okay, here we go. Good luck!

If you’re anything at all like me, looking for something to watch on TV is not so much a matter of choosing the ideal option as it is determining the selection that’s least revolting. I remember a day when there were just three competing major networks, a few ridiculous UHF channels that showed Godzilla movies, and Public Television, which nobody watched. That was it. (This was before PBS became cool. Back then their only program was hosted by a lonely old man in overalls who showed viewers how to make birdhouses.) The explosion of options seemed to usher in a new age of video entertainment. There are now 100s of channels competing for the viewer’s attention and amazingly the vast majority of programming is what is euphemistically referred to as “reality TV” – which means, in English, programming that will never contain anything even remotely associated with reality. Today, you can be immersed in shallow misrepresentations of all sorts of lives including: the wretched drug-addled remains of rock “musicians” and those unfortunate enough to be related to them, exterminators, crab fishermen, ex-cons who escort pit bulls, midgets riding miniature tractors, fat campers, pathological hoarders, competitive eaters, and sewage farm attendants…among others. And so I survey this landscape of hideous refuse and deep within me swells yet again the furious resentment which can only be felt by those who have suffered beneath the cloud of stigma following me and my fellow whackadoomians and I ask – If they have time to showcase every last scrap of humanity down to the very bottom of the barrel why oh why have they no room, no time, for the mentally ill?

As Tiberius said to Caligula, “It is better to be feared than to be loved.” You history buffs out there will recall that Caligula took these sage words to heart and ruled ancient Rome with a flamboyant accent on intimidation. Was Caligula crazy? Frankly, it’s too soon to tell. But one thing is certain, in fairy tales, foreign films, comic books and ballads – crazy is way scary yes indeed. Even bad guys – (guys so bad they would tear the tag off a mattress – so thoughtless and cruel they would blabber away at the top of their lungs in a crowded Starbucks – so insensitive to the fate of our dear mother earth they would purchase and drive a Hummer!) – are frightened by the whackadoomious among us. Speaking as a card-carrying resident of Cookoopantsatopolis, I am here to tell you that all of us have been overlooking a significant strategic opportunity! Instead of feeling contrite and embarrassed about our disabilities – (or “differences” if you prefer) – let’s flaunt them! Naturally we would all prefer to be loved for who we really are, but candidly, will that be happening soon? I thought not. So, in the interim, let’s find ways to make fear of the mentally ill a wedge in the door that opens up into social acceptance.

Younger readers may be astounded to learn that physical fitness was not always admired in America, universally acknowledged as the planet’s fattest nation. Oh no! Not so long ago, smoking cigarettes was the very height of chic, pizza was considered a health food, and the ability to drink into oblivion was widely viewed as proof of character. (Extra points were awarded if you woke up in a Tijuana brothel sporting an armadillo tattoo.) Back then, there were two places where you could find exercise equipment, the YMCA and the weight rooms of prosperous academic institutions. Men who paid attention to their physiques were thought to be fabulously unintelligent, gender-ambivalent, or professional wrestlers; or all three. Women did not engage in any exercise at all other than pushing vacuum cleaners and lifting chubby infants.

Those of us who fit the description “mentally ill” face exceptional challenges when it comes to networking, career advancement, and interviewing techniques. Johnny All-American Lunchbucket probably never had to explain away that year in a Turkish prison to a horrified Human Resources executive. And yet, for the likes of us, that is not even an exceptional challenge. The mentally ill – (extra-normally enabled) – job seeker needs to be ready with plausible explanations for suspicious terminations, demotions, and outstanding warrants. Honesty is always the best policy, but, bear in mind that when you are talking about intergalactic chess tournaments played in five-dimensional swimming pools, your interviewer simply isn’t qualified to understand you. There is a fine art to crafting alternate explanations that might conceivably be true and satisfy your HR representative’s need to fill out a form that will never be read, or even touched, by anyone else. It is your responsibility to make yourself easy to hire, and one of the ways you do this is by discussing your past in terms that do not fill prospective employers with dread.

It’s been said that Hollywood is the one place in the world where they really do believe practice makes perfect – because, it churns out the same exhausted retreads year in and year out. Indeed, it’s axiomatic in Hollywood that an original idea isn’t merely unwelcome, it’s a career killer. For decades, members of the mental health community, especially those who labor every day under the burden of mental illness, have looked to the west in hopes of seeing films that address psychological and emotional issues with courage, insight, and creativity. To their horror, only clowns, boiled eggs, and serial killers riding tricycles looked back.