From "Anonymous," at Boing Boing:
"As a mental health professional, and having heard Charlie Sheen's recent rants, I think there is a very high probability that his current mental state is reflective of either a hypomanic or manic episode. He is thought disordered, with tangentiality in his speech which could be an indication of a psychosis, and there is evident grandiosity in his thought content.
I think he is likely suffering from a severe mental illness at this time.
It is sad to see people making fun out of this, and it's consequences in terms of his own actions and utterances, but it's probably out of ignorance rather than malice.
If the guy is a being a bit quirky, by all means have a go at him, but if he's evidently mentally ill, don't contribute to the ubiquitous stigma that people with real mental illnesses have to put up with on a daily basis.
Go look up 'mania' on wikipedia for a start."
You know, I thought about this briefly before I did the comic. But this comment, which makes some fair points, made me stop and think about it again. I decided to go ahead with the comic because I personally have no idea what Charlie Sheen's diagnosis is. Yes, his behavior and thought process have been erratic (and, I'm sure, display some textbook symptoms), but making fun of the erratic, dumb and/or hypocritical behavior of those who have power and fame is what satirists do. To take a far easier case, I wouldn't hesitate to make fun of Qaddafi for fear of being insensitive, and he even more clearly has some sort of mental illness. More to the point, unless Sheen had been actually and publicly diagnosed, it's very unlikely that anyone reading the comic would ever think the intent of the comic was to poke fun at mental illness.
But while this seems to be about a contractual dispute involving a lucrative TV sitcom, there are obviously tragic and horrific elements to Charlie Sheen's behavior, including violence toward women. And the story took a very sad turn this morning when his children were taken away from him by court order. But I wouldn't have done the comic if I didn't feel I could compartmentalize his recent public performances and contractual dispute, as distinct from his family and personal situation. Look, in the past 10 years I've had to satirize and find humor in various, compartmentalized elements of national tragedies, terrifying wars and economic disasters.
In any case, I found Sheen's interviews hilarious and entertaining, and did a comic about them. Aside from that, I do recognize that this is a man in a terrible crisis that goes way beyond his employment situation (in doing "research" for the comic I learned a lot more about him), and I hope he and his family come through it well and healthy.