Talk:Mental Illness

I have a problem with this theme, because there is a difference between interpretation and diagnosis. It's one thing to believe-- and even affirm to the "TMBG community"-- that a song belongs to X-theme, even if it's not stated outright. It's always better to have real evidence, but if you don't, it should be at least a well-known interpretation ... "Museum of Idiots" being about trees (well, that's actually the only one I can think of at the moment), and it should at least have a good argument that a song may have been intended that way. Before I begin to ramble though, what I'm trying to say is that all of these songs are diagnosed with themes without any suggestion that the band characterized the song or the narrator that way and without any suggestion that, even if you could argue the narrator had OCD or whatever, this claim for insanity is at all a focus, or theme, of the song. Just one example as I'm going through the list...

• Montana is marked with delusions. This is never stated in the song, but (like Museum of Idiots) it's an argument many fans have seen/thought, and it's probable John meant it that way.
• Now Is Strange's narrator hallucinates? A vague song like this offers kind-of a picture of creepy almost-horror. There's no indication that John was crafting this as from the mind of a guy hallucinating, and no words or common claims to back that up... maybe there is some other insanity suggestible, but that's not the point.

The point is you can't just say some song fits into a psychiatric profile that gets more specific (and less defensible) than the theme implies. While doing that's fine or passable once in a while, this is a whole batch of songs which you can barely back up. (This seems badly worded to me, oh well.) ~ magbatz 06:36, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking, why not just cut the diagnoses altogether and set this up like other themes, just quoting lyrics and other "official" sources that explicitly mention symptoms of mental illness? That would take out the more far-fetched interpretations if they're too specific. Montana counts, because the delusional thing was mentioned in an interview, but - for example - A Self Called Nowhere doesn't because the only thing actually described is a guy hanging around a music store. The requirements could go at the top of the page, or something.

The main problem is that these topics are really subjective even compared to the other themes; if you're too strict then some of the obvious candidates are gone, and if you're too lenient people can argue for the songs that are too abstract or conceptualised to mean anything. Still, I think adding more quotes and establishing some kind of standard would be the best way to start cleaning up. ~ blitzente (talk) 23:11, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

My primary issue with this theme is that 'insanity' is no longer considered a valid medical term (and hasn't been for a considerable period of time), and is now only used in cases of criminal law; as such, lumping all forms of mental illness under the insanity umbrella is rather something of a misnomer (ala, depression is not insanity, even by its former definition). A more accurate term for this theme would be 'mental illness', or as blitzente suggests, just removing this theme entirely and splitting it into more specific themes (e.g. depression, megalomania, etc.). ~ Barvobot 15:58 22 Jan 2015

i'm inclined to agree with you. hopefully there will be some Reform coming soon to song themes in general, and i don't see why this shouldn't be a part of it. Apollo (colloquia!) 20:01, 26 January 2015 (EST)

New comment on a 15 year old discussion but I'd tend to agree, we should probably change the name of this page to "Mental Illness" and then have some bot change the text on every page from Insanity to Mental Illness, or some other name for the page.--Robot Parade (talk) 15:08, 15 December 2024 (EST)

Just call me Some Bot because I just went and changed all these manually. NINE YEARS IS LONG ENOUGH! ~ Barvobot 23:55 24 Dec 2024 (EST)