Crude to link leadership drive to mental health

Richard Fitzpatrick (Features, Jan 16) treaded a tricky line relating the ‘evidence’ collated by Nassir Ghaemi and Ian Robertson to validate “links between leadership and mental health” and “how power affects your brain”, etc.

Such observations are at once plausible yet risible in corralling erstwhile ‘leaders’ and pasting mental health ‘conditions’ on them.

Doing so nullifies context and scope.

No doubt, people who are obsessed with achieving status and power have a drive narrowed beyond the ‘average range’.

Whether or not such excessive behaviour thrives within a separate category of so-called ‘mental health’ is a moot point. Variations in personality and/or mood may also be construed as residing in the ‘wide-normal’ zone.

It just depends how normal is normal, and what and how we adjudge and appraise.

The balance between objectivity and subjectivity is dynamic, and prone to social acceptability and the fashion of a given era. An individual who threatens the accepted mores of his time might be assessed as bizarre beyond the ‘agreed’ norm.

This, despite the likelihood of this so-called ‘norm’ being a contrivance, riddled with contradiction and based on compliance.

Perhaps we shouldn’t rush headlong to view the extremely rich, powerful or famous through a narrowed ‘mental health’ lens with eyes only for apparent ‘abnormality’.

More so, we should enthuse and celebrate the diversity of personality traits operating in all of us — famous or no.

Flux, entropy and irregularity are some of nature’s core dynamics, so it would be fascinating and enriching if we accommodated and saluted all-comers, instead of analysing the dynamics of fame, celebrity and power.

Normality is wider than a crooked mile.

Jim Cosgrove

Lismore

Co Waterford