How on earth in this age of spin do we define madness? In the old days, if you lost your grip on reality and believed in a fantasy world of your own making, if you were convinced people were attacking you, and that an epidemic, ravaging the country, was the work of some foreign power, or even witches, the authorities would want you restrained. You would need help and counseling and some instruction about how to see the world as it is, not how you think it is. If you were in a position of authority, where you were making decisions about the welfare of others, this would be a difficult but not impossible transition. You would be taught compassion for the suffering of others. You would learn to use logic and reason and understand science. If you were accustomed to affluence yourself and did not know how to navigate a supermarket, life might be difficult. Some men in the past believing themselves super intelligent have had to be constrained for promoting themselves as reincarnations of some historical figure they admired. When delusion becomes the only reality, it would be better to confine such sufferers in permanent secure locations in order to save the rest of humanity.