How 'Mad' Are You? tries to be sensitive about mental illness. So why does it make me squirm? | Fiona Wright

SBS’s reality show speaks frankly about mental illness. But where does its inspirational rhetoric leave those of us who don’t recover?

The single most helpful thing I ever did for my mental health was stop trying to pass as “normal”.

I stopped trying to do the things that people around me can do without thinking – go out for dinner, say, or take a slice of the birthday cake being passed around the office – that make me so anxious that my brain starts to stutter, or my chest clamps up, or I’m suddenly unable to properly breathe. I stopped trying and failing to do these things, and my life suddenly became so much less complicated. My illness stopped being so difficult to live alongside.

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