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How Mad Are We?
Nov. 12th, 2008 01:00 pmLast night Becca and I got sucked into watching possibly the most horribly-ill-advised programme ever - or possibly it was genius. It was "How Mad Are You?" on Horizon, so you can't blame me for the 'mad' in the subject line. I suppose "Have any been diagnosed with one of these mental health problems, whether or not you're 'recovered', in remission, or just coping really, really well at the moment?" isn't as catchy a title...
If you don't feel like looking at the link, the premise was 5 people who had been diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anorexia, schizophrenia and social anxiety (yes, I know that's six separate disorders - Bec and I went back and forth on that for a bit, and we think the social anxiety is likely to go with the depression, though could be another two entirely), and 5 people who don't have any of these, were stuck together for a week and three mental health professionals tried to figure out who was who. Part of this involved challenges designed specifically to push someone with a disorder way beyond their comfort levels. WAY beyond them. Like doing a stand-up comedy routine in the local pub? The first day they got there?!?
The thing was, all of the people - professionals and - what would you call them? contestants? participants? -- alike, were mostly really likable and interesting people, and the professionals were notably devoid of the type of arrogance that can too often come with being an 'expert'. And it was absolutely fascinating, though we cycled between horror, indignation, admiration and approval at a rate approaching centrifugal separation.
In the first programme, they did the comedy routine, mucking out amazing amounts of cow excrement in a local farm, and a paint-ball type combat along with a few questionnaires, and a card game, and then the professionals had to choose one person with a disorder and one without. Bec and I did as well as they did, getting one right and one wrong, though we were sure we'd done better! The good thing was that the guy with O.C.D. (we'd thought he didn't have it) who was spotted was fine with it, while the one who was supposedly problem free (we knew she wasn't) was thrilled to have fooled them and been thought the person most likely to be 'normal'. Their both being happy took away a lot of our indignation at what could have been a massively exploitative programme. But we'll see about next week, when they're photographing everyone in white leotards and then making them look at their photos... (That caused the indignation part of the cycle to cycle back big time for us both.)
One last thought: apologies for gender stereotypical observations here, but one thing I noticed was that almost all of the women were observing and commenting on the other participants - not in a bitchy sort of way, but thinking about how they interacted with the group or didn't, and just noticing their comfort or lack thereof. Not one of the men did. And the three professionals? All male. They talked about one of the women's style of leading a combat-type game as being defeatist, because she got everyone together and then said something along the lines of "let's go for it, and then even if we lose, we'll still have had fun" - instead of seeing it as being a less-competitve, more comfortable way of playing a game which had nothing riding on it whatsoever. We thought that was silly. We think we know the ones with bipolar disorder and depression, and Bec's pretty sure about the person who had anorexia, but I'll report honestly next week on how right we were. Or otherwise.
But how the hell did anyone come up with such a - er, - crazy idea for a TV show?
If you don't feel like looking at the link, the premise was 5 people who had been diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anorexia, schizophrenia and social anxiety (yes, I know that's six separate disorders - Bec and I went back and forth on that for a bit, and we think the social anxiety is likely to go with the depression, though could be another two entirely), and 5 people who don't have any of these, were stuck together for a week and three mental health professionals tried to figure out who was who. Part of this involved challenges designed specifically to push someone with a disorder way beyond their comfort levels. WAY beyond them. Like doing a stand-up comedy routine in the local pub? The first day they got there?!?
The thing was, all of the people - professionals and - what would you call them? contestants? participants? -- alike, were mostly really likable and interesting people, and the professionals were notably devoid of the type of arrogance that can too often come with being an 'expert'. And it was absolutely fascinating, though we cycled between horror, indignation, admiration and approval at a rate approaching centrifugal separation.
In the first programme, they did the comedy routine, mucking out amazing amounts of cow excrement in a local farm, and a paint-ball type combat along with a few questionnaires, and a card game, and then the professionals had to choose one person with a disorder and one without. Bec and I did as well as they did, getting one right and one wrong, though we were sure we'd done better! The good thing was that the guy with O.C.D. (we'd thought he didn't have it) who was spotted was fine with it, while the one who was supposedly problem free (we knew she wasn't) was thrilled to have fooled them and been thought the person most likely to be 'normal'. Their both being happy took away a lot of our indignation at what could have been a massively exploitative programme. But we'll see about next week, when they're photographing everyone in white leotards and then making them look at their photos... (That caused the indignation part of the cycle to cycle back big time for us both.)
One last thought: apologies for gender stereotypical observations here, but one thing I noticed was that almost all of the women were observing and commenting on the other participants - not in a bitchy sort of way, but thinking about how they interacted with the group or didn't, and just noticing their comfort or lack thereof. Not one of the men did. And the three professionals? All male. They talked about one of the women's style of leading a combat-type game as being defeatist, because she got everyone together and then said something along the lines of "let's go for it, and then even if we lose, we'll still have had fun" - instead of seeing it as being a less-competitve, more comfortable way of playing a game which had nothing riding on it whatsoever. We thought that was silly. We think we know the ones with bipolar disorder and depression, and Bec's pretty sure about the person who had anorexia, but I'll report honestly next week on how right we were. Or otherwise.
But how the hell did anyone come up with such a - er, - crazy idea for a TV show?
