Well I’ve never been so insulted in my life, actually I have, but that’s not the point.  We’ve had the able bodied Olympics and now it’s the turn of the Para Olympians, and a good thing too.  But hang on – what about a mental games?   

I can only assume it’s an extended branch of the stigmatization that affects us all, rather like not being allowed to attend jury service.  Well I soon put a stop to that, oh yes matey-boy!  The events may not strictly follow the games rules but, if you can consider air rifle shooting a sport, it’s about time the mentals had a go.

My version of the games would far cheaper for a start.  I mean, you wouldn’t need a drug testing unit, after all everyone will be on something!  The only person you might have to hire is a psychiatrist to make sure the athletes have the correct side-effects for the drugs they take.  Finishing times will be affected badly, but if you’re suffering from nausea, stomach cramps, excess sweating, tiredness and have a “vague feeling of being unwell”, what do you expect!

So what events can you expect to see?  Well, for the depressive teams, even through they’ll believe they won’t be able to get over them; I would enter them in the 100m hurdles.  They will be lower than the usual games hurdles but all the competitors will have to do is get over the first one to win the coveted gold straightjacket, designed by Vivian Westwood.

For the safety of the crowd, the psychopaths won’t be allowed anywhere near the javelins.  They will be kept in reserve for any up and coming suicide bids.  This will be a floating event as most don’t want to top themselves, so the time frame is hard to predict.  There will be a ‘talking the patient down from the roof’ event.  And for insurance reasons, the hammer throwing event will now not take place.    

On day four of the Mental Health Games (MHG) a new event will be added called, Spot the Side-effects.  Glaxo Smithkline were asked to judge this event  but declined saying, ‘None of our antipsychotic drugs have any side-effects attached to them,’ at which point our MHG representative burst out laughing. 

The men and women’s Free Style Ward Escaping Relay proved to be such a success in trials, that it will now take centre stage during the last day of the games.  And, as it’s a key part of mental health treatment, this years games will see two more ground breaking events introduced called.  The first is ‘Spot the diagnosis in under a year’ and the second is, ‘prescribing the correct meds in less than three years.’ 

MHG update: people with dual personalities will now be able to enter the three legged race by themselves…

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2012 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Neils Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.