Sanity

I watched The Soloist, a powerful film based on a true, factual account of a talented cellist, Nathaniel Ayres, who had a breakdown while studying at Julliard, and ended up living rough, homeless, in Los Angeles, When Steve Lopez, a Los Angeles Times feature writer came across him. Ayres was obsessed with Beethoven. There are snippets from Beethoven's late quartets and his symphonies right through the film. Perhaps Ayres felt that the discipline imposed at the Julliard School came between him and Beethoven. With the help of Lopez, Ayres was accepted by the the LAMP Community on Skid Row in Los Angeles and there he lived among men and women with severe mental illness.

Whether the perception of mental illness presented in the film is true is something I can't comment on, but there were some interesting insights. When Lopez told David, the director of the institution to take Ayres to a doctor and make him take his medicine, David said that the last thing these people needed was to be told to see a doctor and take their medicine. They chose to live the way they lived. One of the women said that she hears voices talking to her, and these voices are very comforting. If she takes lithium the voices disappear, but to her great regret, so does the reassurance they provide. When Lopez found an apartment for Ayres, Ayres at first refused to move in. He thought that it limited his freedom. He was terrified of being institutionalized. 

Do we treat the schizophrenics and those suffering from a bipolar condition because it suit us, suits society, to make them conform, or do we treat them for their own good? There was no question about it, the mental patients suffered from a sense of insecurity, loneliness. The best thing that Lopez could do for Ayres was to befriend him without trying to change him. He had to accept that for better or worse Ayress is the way he is, would have to live with his mental condition for the rest of his life, but could still get ecstatic joy from the music of Beethoven.