While the idea can seem scary - you're really vastly over generalizing. It all depends on the person, the illness, how ill, how controlled, if they're on medication, the set-setting-mind-set, and about a billion other factors. One of my old best friends (we're no longer friends, but not because of his "illness" infact by becoming a magician and learning to better control his mind he has it under control with about no outburts) had Schizotypy (I use the blanket term, rather than, Schizophrenic - Schizoid or Schizotypal Personality Disorder - as he desplayed IMHO attributes of them all and was extremely afraid to get diagnosed by the doctor as he didnt want to be locked up or forced on medication. He was the nicest dude I've ever known - I felt for him having recently had a stint in a mental asylum myself (against my will, while I was unable to defend my self sensibly - I slightly overdosed on Ativan - would've been fine in the morning but they took me the ER - decided since I couldn't tell them anything coherent that I tried to kill myself and (blue-pink?)paper'd me right to the psych unit - the fucking bastards. I woke up in a hospital bed, on suicide watch - I didnt want to die - I was trying to get really really really high and stupidly took it too far (probably due to the amensia and after the black out I have no idea what happened) but I was locked up in a padded room with barred walls and no outside place atall other than a rusy iron barred cagged in balancony that you had to have 3 psych people with you. I was in there, just a stoner teenager who played the game to get some ativan legally rather than goin' threw dealers and gettin' ripped off, with hardcore mentally ill people - lealand psych unit in beverly hospital (beautiful hospital - poured endless dollars into redoing the entire phisade, yet the lealand unit - which my dad went to when HE DID try to committ suicide waaay back in the day) has not changed since the 1970's - not a bit - same paint - VHS tapes - old chairs - beds - no freakin' doors on the bathroom or showers. Couldn't even have headphones or shoelaces for christsakes. When my dad came, he informed me how eerie it was because it literally had not changed since he was there 25 - 30 years ago. I feel bad for ever mistreated patient in there - they're all just people - that have it way worse off than you can ever imagine. One guy I was roommates with (btw - you have 4 room mates, and they flash your face with a flash light ever hour on the hour all night long - so good luck sleeping in the rock hard bed and stiff uncomfortable bedding/thin 1 pillow) - he used to be an engineer in a music studio - he recorded the red hot chille peppers demo before they chagned their name to the peppers - hes a little odd - has a sweet tooth but wicked nice guy. He just has no family anymore, and only 1 friend that comes to visit him once in a blue moon to eat lunch and play a board game. These people are never getting out - 80% of them. The only woman that was geniuely scarey - was fiercely violent and schizophrenic - I watched them all run past my room after hearing screaming in spanish about (I barely remember spanish from high school) her dead parents being in the room, saying something to her - and she threw something. They tackled her - needle stick (I'm guessing thorazine, some form of chemical straight jacket - assholes) - and I still feel bad for her.
You'd be hard pressed to find someone who was truly honest with a therapist or psychiatrist that wouldn't pass for some mental disorder or another - ADD / ADHD the most prevelant - then depression/anxiety (which I think - all antipsychotics and ssri's, snri's, etc are trash - You don't play with neuromodulation like that IMO, not my brain atleast. I want to be able to safely ingest a hallucinogen or entactogen without worrying about it not working or giving me serotonin syndrome). Benzodiazepines, amphetamines, xyrem (GABA-B and GHB Receptor PAM's/agonists have been demonized by thanks to the very things that replaced them, freakin benzos lol - rohypnol in particular) and even barbituates if safely used have a much higher efficacy to treat disorders along with cognitive behavior therapy.
Anyway thats besides the point. Yes I would and you should reevaluate how fine the line between sane and "insane" really is - and if it really exists at all. IMO its like sexuality or anything else in life - theres a balance - leaning one way or the other.
