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Idiom: Around the bend
Have you seen the news recently?
I’m telling you, It’s enough to drive you around the bend.
The constant amount of bad and scary news is enough to affect you mentally.
It can leave you confused and unable to determine which way to turn for help or what to do.
The origin of this phrase might be interesting if we knew what it was.
The problem is that the real source has been lost to history, leaving us to make an educated guess.
There are at least two possible origins for the idiom around the bend.
The first is the idea that the entrance road leading to a mental hospital in the Victorian days was lined with trees on both sides but curved instead of straight.
The curve and the trees served to hide the mental hospital from the road and the neighbours.
There was often a very negative stigma associated with mental health.
This is a theory, not a proven fact, so take it with a grain of salt.
The other suspected origin has to deal with ropes and ships.
It may be that ropes with twists, knots or other types of bends are hard to deal with.
Therefore, people who were slightly ‘crazy’ were around the bend.
In English, we can say that someone who is somewhat kooky is also loopy.
A rope with loops in it can be hard to handle, I suppose, so there is a loose connection there.
There is another term, ‘on the straight and narrow,’ which means someone is honest and easy to deal with.
This refers to the so-called path to heaven, which is straight and narrow.
People suffering from severe mental challenges were often seen as possessed by the devil.
Perhaps we could say people going around the bend were not on the straight and narrow; therefore, they were crazy, loopy and not following God’s path.
It’s all unknown.
The thing to remember is that if someone says they are going around the bend, something is driving them crazy.
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