A few weeks ago while leaving a restaurant, I noticed a black Suburban with tinted windows and nice wheels parked a couple of spaces down from my car. The back window had stick-on block letters that read ‘Northern Sierra Clinic’ (not its real name, but similar) placed across the top and underneath, in a script lettering it said, ‘Specializing in Mental Health Since 1996.’ How crass I thought, how horribly wrong is that? There should never be psychiatric advertising on the back of an SUV, it had a trailer hitch for pity’s sake.
It’s too gross to contemplate. You can only imagine what else they did, ads in newspapers with clip-out coupons in the Sunday supplement: two-fer sales for people with bipolar disorders, free mugs or keychains to the first ten people with anorexia nervosa, or give-away Rorschach coasters with each free consultation. Maybe they would have a fancy Website: ‘If you feel you are having a psychotic episode click on the Barney icon.’ Possibly they would produce a cheesy TV ad featuring a Down’s Syndrome child with a forehead as big as a dinner plate and eyes all akimbo yelling at the camera and mispronouncing the phrase “Twenty per cent off.” Okay, so maybe I’ll smoke a turd in hell for that one, but if you laughed then you too may be roasting in sulfur in the not-to-distant future. Honestly, what I’m saying is that people who probably worked at Verizon or sold truck bed-liners in an earlier life should not be attending to the psychiatric needs of mentally ill patients.
Random Marginalia From People On Lithium