"I'd have to be crazy to think of walking 60 miles."
It is National Mental Health Awareness Week. Leonard Pitts' column on Sunday, October 3rd, is about participation in a Walk for the Cure for Breast Cancer. The columnist will be in this walk in the Washington D.C. area from Friday until next Monday. His use of the word crazy is partly colloquial, and
expressions like this in daily life and daily reading cast stigma on people who suffer or who have suffered over psychiatric problems.
His use of the word crazy is partly in reference to his state of mind. By crazy he may mean that he searches his thoughts and wonders if he is using Magical Thinking - Believing that one is able to transcend the laws of cause and effect in order to influence a specific outcome by one;s thoughts, words, or actions. By crazy he may mean that he feels he is in a stage of relapse - Over-extension - in which one feels overwhelmed by daily stress and has difficulty concentrating or attending to the external world -
An event can create challenging stress that becomes an element of mental illness. I wonder if there are columns by Leonard Pitts about psychiatry and psychology. I am reminded of a song by Billy Joel - "You may be right, I may be crazy."
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