That's not to say that many people without mental illness are not OK too, just that in my personal experience people who have been through the psychological and emotional treadmill of mental illness seem to have a better grasp and appreciation of the more important things in life, like mental and emotional health for example. Mentally ill people also seem to have a humility and humanity which many erroneously termed "normal people" seem to be without. They come across as friendlier and more genuine, and there's a likeability about many of them which you just don't usually find with people who have not experienced the pain and anguish of mental illness.

Of course this is only my personal experience and perception of many of the mentally ill people I have come into contact with, and I have also encountered people with mental health problems who do not fit this picture. But it seems that the mental and emotional pain of mental illness can act as a humbler of the ego, letting us know that we are not invincible or super-human, just human and thus imperfect and fallible. The experience of mental illness has a deleterious effect on our self-esteem and sense of self worth, sometimes causing an inferiorty complex; making us feel like lesser persons and thus not as good as everyone else.

But mentally ill people are normal. It is normal to experience mental illness, in fact you could legitimately be labelled "abnormal" if you did not experience some form of mental illness at least once in your lifetime. The body gets ill, the brain is part of the body, so it naturally becomes ill sometimes too. The mind is the totality of our neural and synaptic connections; our accumulated thoughts, memories, and self-concept. In mental illness sometimes we lose our self-concept and forget who we are, perhaps even feel that we have lost ourselves for good, but at our core we are always there.

Mentally ill people are the best kind of people because they are normal and real, they have manifested their foibles and fallibilities, have found the humility to accept that they are not perfect, and have displayed the strength and courage to battle their illness and not allow it to defeat them, and that is what I like about mentally ill people.

Three cheers for the mentally ill!

Hip-hip! ....you know the routine.