Let us get a bit ridiculous. There is a new donut shop in Campbell, CA (We should have a meet up there. anyone else up for it?) called Psycho Donuts that serves donuts with names like Bipolar, Manic Malt, and Psycho in a padded cell with servers dressed as nurses. The nonprofit United Advocates for Children and Families (UACF) has its cerebellum in a tizzy because mental illness is not supposed to be funny. Check out Psycho Donuts co-owner Kipp Berdiansky debating mental-health advocate Oscar Wright, CEO of UACF over whether his business is inappropriate or in bad taste.
Berdiansky states his point in the Psycho Donuts blog:
It’s a shame that there are a handful of folks out there who do not have a sense of humor. Follow me here - if our donuts are crazy, does that make us insensitive to the mental health community? Is El Pollo Loco insensitive to Crazy Chickens? Was Patsy Cline being hurtful when she wrote the song Crazy? Is it insensitive to call a donut bipolar? …let’s agree on one thing: donuts are not people; and the names of our donuts do not correspond to any opinion or pre-conceived notion about people.
To those who are spending countless hours building an intricate strategy against us, we have a simple solution — go buy your donuts elsewhere. Or if you don’t like donuts, go spend your time on the bigger problems in the world. Go find a donut shop you like, or focus your concerns on something other than two guys trying to sell donuts. But irregardless — the crowds of people who have a sense of humor will keep coming, and these are our customers.
In this day and age, all of us are a little crazy. 25% of Americans have some clinical form of mental health challenge - and our take is that the rest of us just haven’t been clinically diagnosed yet! I might add that Psycho Donuts contributes to NARSAD (www.narsad.org) - which is a mental health research organization. We might make light of the topic in our store, but we aim to be a positive contributor to positive mental health. Psycho Donuts is a testament to the human condition, and a place where we can all accept our individual faults. If people can leave our store with a smile on their face, then we’ve done our part contributing to people’s positive mental health.
Frankly, it is just a donut shop - a police home away from home. It isn't a commentary on the state of mental health and, if you don't like it, don't go there. Sheesh!
