When emotion is actually felt and expressed, you suffer the staff-imposed consequences. If you cry, you're considered suicidal. If you're angry you are aggressive and dangerous.

Darby Penney is director of the Bureau of Recipient Affairs for the New York State Office of Mental Health. In her cabinet-level position, she supervises a staff of 14 and reports directly to the commissioner of the world's largest mental health system. Darby tries to infuse her work with survival lessons she learned during her stay in psychiatric hospitals. In the hospital you are asked to talk about your feelings, but when that emotion is actually felt and expressed, you suffer the staff-imposed consequences. If you cry, you are considered suicidal. If you're angry, you are aggressive and dangerous. And if you are laughing too happily, you are manic and need to be sedated.

Each of us defies set formulas. The timing and options are different for each of us. What is helpful is the right to take risks-the opportunity to fail or succeed, as well as the freedom to make decisions and choices. Without risk, without choice, the whole process is perverted into, stabilization and maintenance at best and incarceration at worst but never growth and development.

When people who have been diagnosed and treated for serious mental illness work and play side by side with others, they will be seen and valued for who they are with all their strengths, weaknesses and foibles. By demystifying madness, we can begin to appreciate the beautiful gifts that diversity offers to everyone.

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