So much is written about the mental health crisis in our country these days. Everyone who commits a violent crime is someone who has mental issues, and then the second guessing starts. Family and friends of the perp make statements about the person being "not right" or "showing signs of having problems" and people think that if only these people would have said or done something...
The thing is, when do people recognize their own issues? How does a person know when they've crossed the line from stressed out or disturbed to psychosis? Or maybe this is how people go nuts and shoot people up. Probably they started out perfectly normal. Maybe things started happening in their environment that stressed them out. A lot. And maybe they were predisposed to psychosis and didn't even realize it. So, something is going on all the time that is stressing them out, and sooner or later the symptoms start. Erratic behavior. Altered perceptions of reality. Emotional instability. And then, one day - wham! The person just goes off the deep end. And nobody saw it coming because it just crept up on everyone - including the crazy person.
So, the question is this: when things start happening to cause someone to believe that he or she is "losing it", what comes next? People often say "I'M LOSING IT" when they are confronted with a difficult or confusing situation. But when is it really time to say "enough"? How does someone recognize that she is on the edge of sanity? Is it when your memory of events becomes a tangle of confusion in your head, or is it when you remember something with absolute clarity only to find out that you are not remembering correctly at all? Or maybe it's when that crystal clear memory is surrounded on either side by tangles of confusion.
The biggest question of all: Is sanity or the lack thereof proven by the questions being asked?
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