It was cold and wet in Melbourne yesterday so The Green Man settled himself down in front of the fire to veg out on junk TV. He was confronted with a choice of football or a range of repeats on both free-to-air and cable TV. The choice fell to "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" which should be complete crap but from time to time raises above the genre to deliver some thought provoking television. Yesterday was one of those days.

As usual Buffy is occupied with the business of despatching vampires and other undesireables from Sunnydale where she lives. One of them injects her with a poison and she finds herself alternating between two quite different realities. One, of course, is the Sunnydale/vampire experience and the other is a psychiatric ward in which she is a patient. In the room with her are her mother and father and a doctor. They tell her that the Sunnydale experience is a reality she has created for herself inside her mind and that she has been locked in the ward for 6 years.

The doctor says to her

Think about it Buffy, what is more likely? That you are a superhero killing all these fantastic creatures or that you are a poor sick girl who has created this exciting imaginary world

You have to admit it is a pretty cogent argument and Buffy thinks so too. The problem is that the Sunndale/vampire reality is just so much better than the psychiatric ward reality. Which will she choose?

Before you dismiss this as a piece of nothingness, consider that this is a choice that must be made by many individuals with psychiatric disorders. They are confronted with what we like to think of as the "real reality", a place in which they are probably homeless and poverty stricken; where they are looked on with suspicion by the majority of the population. In summary their life is miserable and depressing.

Many of these people have their equivalent of the Sunnydale/vampire reality where they are happy and respected. They have friends that they have known and who have been with them for many years. It is an exciting and happy place.

We think it is important that they spend all their time in our reality, the crap one. We have medication that we give these people to prevent them from living in their alternative reality. If you were them would you take the medication? Would you choose to forego happiness because some guys in white coats said it was what you should do?

Here are Buffy's choices, which would you choose?

Buffy chooses Sunnydale and the vampires and it is hard to blame her.

For many people suffering this condition in real life this is also the choice that they take. Who could blame them either?