MICHIGAN—Psychiatric wards and other mental health facilities everywhere in the state of Michigan are about to get a lot busier. Governor Rick Snyder signed a bill yesterday prompting a statewide admittance of citizens who claim that they can't wait for it to be cold out.
While Snyder was not available for comment, a spokesperson claimed that signing the bill “was an easy choice for the Governor.” He continued, “It was a no-brainer.”
This bill's genesis began with the publication of the DSM-5 earlier this year, which classifies the new wintery mental situation as “climate mania.”
Dr. Gregory Juniper, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, spoke of the recent phenomenon, saying, “In the past month, we've heard of hundreds of cases of people who actually believe that they want the temperature outside to be 30-50 degrees colder than it is right now.”
“Obviously these are the thoughts of someone very disturbed and delusional,” added Juniper.
For anyone suffering from CM, there is hope. “We offer all different kinds of treatments and sessions for the more mild cases,” Juniper said.
One such facility, The Koppen House in Detroit, has already admitted over 260 cases as of this publication. Founder Caitlin Bergeron claims that they've taken in all kinds of patients for the past 20 years but are now looking to become a specialized treatment facility. “We've had drug dependency sufferer, Cotard patients, impulse control victims, and the like. We've even had a guy who thought he was a telephone,” Bergeron said. “But there is something so fundamentally wrong with how these new patients view the world that we simply cannot take on anything else.”
Bergeron added, “I don't use this phrase lightly, but these people are fucking nuts.”
According to the DSM-5, people attributing the following symptoms may have CM:
- Irregular speech patterns, such as “I wish it were
snowing.”
- Muscle spasms, such as taking out a sweatshirt or hoodie,
looking at it, and sighing with nostalgia.
- Hearing deficiency, such as playing Christmas music outside
of the holiday season and Christmas in July.
- Recognition failure, such as seeing snowflakes in puffy
dandelions, hailstorms, or the long white beard of a man sitting at
a bus stop.
It has been reported that only five cases have been put into treatment against their will. Juniper offered a calming response, saying, “It's just so they can't hurt themselves or others. We're not exactly sure what these lunatics are capable of.”
“We are here to help these people because, frankly, no one else can help them,” Bergeron said. “They can't even help themselves. They sit at home and listen to Bon Iver and drink hot chocolate and post things on Tumblr like 'Sweater weather is better weather.' What kind of a life is that?”
There is no way to cure CM at this time, but Bergeron says that there are ways to cope with this mental illness. “We're—what—halfway through September right now? Not even halfway. If these people could just wait until late October, we'd be okay. Just give well-adjusted people at least one month of fucking autumn before we jump into the frigid abyss of Michigan winter.”
No one is exactly sure what cause CM, only that people who suffer from it are just so goddamn wrong. In a state where winter seems to last 75 percent of the year, having an extra couple weeks of summer is a beautiful thing: walking inside and outside without having to add or remove layers, not having to change shoes and socks three times a day because everything is just so fucking wet, and forgetting about the cold The Cold THE FUCKING COLD just for a little while.
“These people don't even seem to know what they are asking for,” Juniper said. “It's dirty road slush. It's consistently wet floors everywhere. It's putting on layers over layers over layers because the windchill factor in this state makes 30 degrees feel like -30 degrees. It's assholes driving 20 mph under the speed limit and then careening off into a ditch or halfway into an intersection.”
“I'm not saying that a light snowfall isn't beautiful,” Bergeron said. “And in the month of December it's fine, but then once we get into January and February, these same people who demanded this Winter Wonderland bullshit suddenly flip and conversely want it to be sunny and warm and need to go swimming in the lake. That's insane.”
“Can we save these sick, sick people?” Bergeron asked. “We don't know, but we're going to try.”
