It’s possible to create a psychological condition accidentally – one that apparently spreads. No wonder getting people to appreciate the severity of genuine mental illness is such an uphill struggle

Just over a month ago, I knocked up a quick blogpost in response to some of the unpleasant things being said in the immediate aftermath of the tragic suicide of Robin Williams.

It was my most popular post to date, with a readership that I’m 99.995% sure I’ll never get again, so many thanks to everyone who read and shared it. I got many nice messages about it (which is always appreciated) and some less nice messages (which isn’t so much). But it also spurred some interesting discussions. Some argued that the true rationale for suicide is more complex. Others emphasised that to describe depression as an illness or disease is unhelpful. Some claimed I was glorifying depression. Others felt I was understating the issues. And many more.

Overall, one thing that was blatant was the total lack of consensus. Even among the professionals, the exact nature of and approach to take with mental illness is a controversial topic. You expand that to include actual sufferers and the general public, and it gets mind-bogglingly complicated (ironically). To illustrate this, here’s the story of how I inadvertently created a psychological condition, one that I’ve named “Lonely Potato Syndrome”.

It was several years ago. I’d finished my PhD, but didn’t have a job. However, there are only so many hours in the day you can spend looking for work, so I got bored a lot. Please bear that in mind.

I’ve never shied away from admitting how I have embarrassed myself in the media. Previous exploits meant that I was sort-of known about in the industry, which led to many unlikely phone calls. I was once contacted by Paramount studios to see if I would make a short film to be used as bonus material for the DVD release of Fred Claus (it didn’t happen in the end, so don’t go looking for it).

I got a similar if-less-bizarre call once from a production company to see if I wanted to be the host of a pilot for a documentary about personality “quirks” (their term). I won’t give the name of the company here, I’ll just say there were a lot of pictures from Total Wipeout in the reception area. I screen tested for them, it seemed to go OK but I was eventually told I didn’t get the job as it had gone to someone more suitable (translation: someone actually famous, with hair). But they didn’t want to lose my involvement with the programme.

During the screen test, I was asked to explain how personality traits occur. There’s only one way to explain the complexity of the human mind in media-friendly soundbites: wrongly. Then they asked me if I had any quirks or weird habits of my own. I honestly don’t think I have, but I felt if I didn’t admit to one I wouldn’t get the job.

Then I remembered an incident where I was home alone and cooked a jacket potato for lunch. Our oven had the usual glass front, so as I walked past the kitchen I looked at it, and noticed the solitary potato sitting in a big oven. It looked … lonely. I ended up sat in the kitchen reading a book for a while (I was unemployed, remember), before putting in another potato, reasoning I’d eat it later. A fleeting moment of irrationality, no doubt the result of constantly being home alone and avoiding filling in more applications.

So when asked if I had any weird habits or quirks, I said “I don’t like cooking a single jacket potato as I think it looks lonely.”

They really liked this, and wanted to explore it further. It ended with their filming me traipsing around a market, buying two of every vegetable due to my “condition” and talking to people about it (ie just making stuff up).

I’m not proud of this; it felt dangerously close to pretending to have a psychological problem. My “section” never made the final cut, for which I was very grateful, but that’s not the point of the anecdote.

When the director spoke to me, he confessed that he had this problem too. Several of the crew said the same. A producer mentioned speaking to people in the office and yes, it was quite a common anxiety people had.

This would all be fine, if it weren’t for one important fact: I MADE IT UP!

I think. What if I was just the first to articulate a common phenomenon; the tendency to empathise with vegetables, like some tuber-based Pareidolia? After all, why would so many people take something I say so seriously?

But then, they’d got me involved because I was an “expert” on these things (again, their words). If the expert neuro/psychology guy says potatoes have feelings, why would they argue? People have a worrying tendency to obey someone they perceive as more authoritative, this would be a mild expression of that if anything.

But if I am the originator, why the sudden, rapid spread? Had I created some sort of communicable “meme”? Was it a low-level mass delusion? Some variant of hypochondria? Were we seeing elements of groupthink or normative influence; a big director is interested in a psychological condition, so those who want to impress or be accepted by him say/think they have it too?

I’ve had people mention this “condition” to me since, without known my experience with it, so it’s clearly spread. That could be coincidence, but then I introduced the concept to a major TV production company! That’s basically poisoning the town reservoir when it comes to spreading ideas among networks of people.

What’s the point of this anecdote? Just to illustrate how easy it was to make people think they had a potential psychological problem. Many personality quirks or habits are actually manifestations of known conditions, but then it often goes too far; you get people who claim to be “a little bit OCD” if they’re a bit overly-neat, or the confusion between being “a bit miserable” and actual depression, or just anyone attributing some aspect of their behaviour to symptoms of a mental illness.

This isn’t to say they’re doing it on purpose; they may genuinely believe what they say, or see no harm in it if they don’t. But the potato story just serves to illustrate how difficult it must be to pin down an actual, clinical mental health issue, with people like me (and less bumbling but more cynical “pop” psychologists) out there spreading guff about it and having it believed due to some perceived authority.

It’s a constant struggle, but one that’s certainly worth doing. Just try and remember how slippery and chaotic studying mental health actually is.

And if you’re someone who works for that production company who’s just finding out I made up the potato thing… sorry.

Dean Burnett doesn’t worry about loneliness (of vegetables or otherwise) since he joined Twitter, @garwboy

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