Everyone, once they finish school, should be drafted into a sanatorium for a year. As a patient. It should be like a kind of national service - you spend a year in an institution, with nothing to distinguish yourself from the other patients who are also there against their will.
It should also be every citizen's duty to be plucked out of their job for a few months and spend some time in an institution. Like jury duty, only a little more involved.
Not only would this give most people a better insight into what people are all about, it would also give doctors some experience of what a "normal person" actually is.-- lostdog, Feb 27 2003 (?) Girl Interrupted http://www.girlinterrupted.com/ [DrCurry, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] (?) National Service http://www.mindef.gov.sg/nsmen/Pretty much the same thing [LoneRifle, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] Hm. I think not.
However, if you could arrange for my colleagues to be placed in a sanatorium, I would be very grateful.-- DrCurry, Feb 27 2003 Hmmm.... now I'm curious as to why my college called itself an 'Institute,' and what that screaming down the hall really was...-- RayfordSteele, Feb 27 2003 Not in my time.-- skinflaps, Feb 27 2003 I already work in an asylum.-- angel, Feb 28 2003 Shirley you aren't implying that the members of the HB are classified as "normal"? (shudder)-- Cedar Park, Feb 28 2003 As an adaptation to this, everyone could be given a temporary disability or have their ethnic origin changed using make up for a period of time. Very difficult and expensive to organise but may make interesting changes to a society.-- oneoffdave, Feb 28 2003 Just because I haven't been shot dosen't mean that I don't know that it would hurt and possibly kill me. And just because I haven't been committed dosen't mean that I don't know that it would suck.-- Gulherme, Feb 28 2003 Isn't this sort of baked in Buddhism, with a monastery replacing the sanatorium (I'm not sure what difference if any there is)? Buddhists are supposed to spend a significant period of time in a monastery at some point in their lives.
Actually, the main difference is that it's a lot cheaper to keep people in a monastery (where they're fed by food donations) than in a sanatorium (where the doctors are fed fine foods).-- pottedstu, Feb 28 2003 Another possibility would be compulsory jail sentences for everyone (perhaps linked with compulsory committing of crimes). Compulsory military service must be the same idea. And I thought of compulsory service in harems/equivalent for men, but we've already done porn conscription.-- pottedstu, Feb 28 2003 This would differ from compulsory secondary education how?-- egbert, Feb 28 2003 Er .... you might learn something useful or relevant ?-- 8th of 7, Feb 28 2003 una: You can call me al was on the radio when I read that annotation. I'm slightly worried.
Anyway, I think this idea ranks up there with a mandatory year of being poked with sharp sticks. How would it give people an insight into what people are about? It would just give them an idea of what insane people are like. How useful is that? Maybe just make "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest" mandatory reading.-- notme, Feb 28 2003 I should perhaps have added the condition that, once a year, everyone gets a sanity test. You only get out if you pass. I only mentioned this as an idea because all the people I've know with "mental" problems - depression, delusions, etc - have proved to be better people (more sensitive, sympathetic) than most of the other people I've met. The real nutters I've known are those who don't even consider the fact that what they believe and what they do could possibly ever be questioned by anybody.-- lostdog, Feb 28 2003 I think everyone should be forced to spend a year of our lives in total isolation, like in a desert island or something. Maybe after not interacting with anyone for such a long period of time people won't just REALLY understand what others (and one's self) are all about... they will also seize the relevance of human relations and we'll start treating each other better.-- Pericles, Mar 01 2003 There's a reason why solitary confinement is one of the most severe forms of punishment we have.-- RayfordSteele, Mar 02 2003 A year in a sanitorium is way too harsh. If you're looking for a way to make people more sensitive to others or gain better insight into human behaviour, there are easier and more productive ways. Examples: --Work in the service industry for a month (McDonald's or Tim Horton's). Try to live off what you earn. --Volunteer at a local animal shelter, food bank or homeless centre.
I like the sentiment behind your idea but not the sentence. Fishbone.-- lintkeeper2, Mar 02 2003 Wouldn't it also drive people insane? Like in that totally mediocre film "House on Haunted Hill"?-- Parvenu, Mar 03 2003 Baked! See link....-- LoneRifle, Mar 14 2003 What's the difference between a sanatorium and a sanatarium?-- mrthingy, Mar 14 2003 The sculptor Yayoi Kusama lives, I believe, in a sanatorium, and has for years. As I remember the story, she committed herself way back in the day, because life was just too hard or somesuch, and has made all her rooms full of cottonjersey phalloi from the sanctity of the looney bin. It seems to have added mightily to her mystique.-- grecosartre, Mar 14 2003 Do they have cable there?-- mrthingy, Mar 14 2003 Apparently they do, mrthingy, because her last piece in a NY show looked like a disco.-- grecosartre, Mar 14 2003 I would fishbone this 15 times if I could.-- andrewm, Mar 15 2003 I PERSONALLY HAVE EXPERIENCED A SANITARIUM AND IT WAS FOR A EXPERIMENTAL DRUG FOR REHABILITATION.....WHILE I WAS IN THERE I SAW AND WITNESSED THE DEFINITION OF CRAZY PER SE...BUT THERE WQERE ALOT OF PPL IN THERE TRHAT HAD PROBLEMS FROM BIRTH....I PERSONALLY THINK THAT AKK THES PPL WHO CONDEMN THESE PATHETIS SOULS SHOULD GO THER AND ENLIGHTEN THEMSELVE TO THE OTHER SIDE...UNTIL YOU HAVE BEEN THERE DO NOT JUDGE....TONYA L-- LESBONISTIC2000, Mar 16 2003 // experimental drug rehab //
Addicted to those pharmeceutical company trial runs, are we?
Then there's the 'Senatarium,' where madmen are voted in to office.-- RayfordSteele, Mar 17 2003 ...and the Señortorium, where they keep the Spanish safely locked away.-- DrBob, Mar 17 2003 the nurse's building in my old school was called the Sanatorium... Explains a lot...-- yamahito, Mar 17 2003 Yah..... I think that rather than the doctors getting "experience of what a "normal person" actually is", I think they'd 'discover' how many people are already insane.
Like me. (though I'm more of a minority)-- :-), Apr 09 2003 House On Haunted Hill IS NOT a mediocre film.-- thecat, Jun 16 2003 Of course you're right, [thecat]. House on Haunted Hill is not a mediocre film. It's just plain bad.
Session 9, although it's a bit slow to start, is actually quite creepy. And there's a japanese film called The Eye which (if you're brave enough to stomach subtitles) is genuinely disturbing at times.
Anyway, thanks for bringing this old albatross up into the recent ideas again. When I first posted it, a friend of mine had just qualified as a psychiactric nurse: from what he'd told me of his experiences, it seemed like he'd learned alot about human nature from seeing all the ways in which it can "go wrong"/become totally socially unacceptable. I thought that many people could do with such a dose of human behaviour "in the raw".
Still, it was never a good idea, and I'm not going to defend it now. It deserved all the dead fish that were flung at it.-- lostdog, Jun 16 2003 [lostdog] I disagree.
About the movie (of course), but more importantly about belittling your own idea. I disagree somewhat about the -reasoning- behind its value, as stated originally (insight/normalacy, etc - you, compassion/fairness, etc - me).
Also, it lacked a paragraph devoted to how you would deal with the dangerous & inevitable downsides that would need to be addressed if it were to be considered within the realm of possibility (even as a thought-provoking exercise).
Don't mistake an ideas unpopularity which its being wrong.-- thecat, Jun 17 2003 Avalon Hill's 'Kremlin' game involved characters being hustled in and out of sanitoriums at regular intervals. Sometimes it was a sanctuary, sometimes a prison. Often a death sentence. Great fun. Just thought I'd mention it.-- DrBob, Jun 18 2003 Only writers would drool over an idea like this. Why just look at Proust. What he couldn't do in a sanitorium in a year's time wasn't worth talking about.-- k_sra, Feb 02 2004 It's surprisingly easy to have someone committed (even more so if you're going out with a police officer). It's remarkably hard to extricate oneself once you've been comitted.-- Detly, Feb 02 2004 random, halfbakery