I am not a nutcase. I’m not mental. Neither am I psycho, schizoid, cray-cray, retard, or any of the other things by which I’m labelled when you talk about me or; when you so ignorantly treat me like I’m a walking illness rather than a person who has a full functioning body and who lives with an illness of one part of that body.
Where do we people learn such “wide-ranging, emotionally-charged and negative terms about mental illness? The primary sources appear to be from the media, and from family and peers.
Derogatory references about people with mental illness appear commonly in the print, broadcast and cinematographic media. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
“Stigma,” the site says, can be considered as an amalgamation of three related problems: a lack of knowledge (ignorance), negative attitudes (prejudice), and excluding or avoiding behaviours (discrimination).”
Almost everyone I know has a diagnosis or has been ill at some point in time. I do not hear people around calling others sugar or sweetness because they’re managing diabetes. I’ve never heard anyone try to embarrass another because they’re hypertensive. When last did you hear someone insult another by saying, “You’re asthmatic!”
I understand that I’m beating up about an issue that’s a challenge globally. I appreciate that I’m trying to undo centuries of abuse. I acknowledge that I’m trying to undo fear and ignorance. But it does not lessen my hurt.
When you say of me to others in hushed embarrassment, “She has mental health problems” or yet, “She mental” you perpetuate the stigma against my community.
I’m not the psychiatric label you place on me. You do that because it possibly helps you to feel better about yourself, or better than I am. You do that probably because you are too lazy to make an attempt to find out about that which you choose to speak so unkindly. You do that because you really do not care about me. You do not yet care about me as a person because you need to hide what’s wrong with you or with those around you.
I have not met a family that can wholly claim they do not have someone in their history or the present that has an issue classified as a challenge in mental health.
I’m cognisant of the fact that we hide these things. We think it’s bad manners to speak of whatever betides if we do not know or understand it. So we hide it in the backroom—“it” is sometimes a relative hidden in the backroom of our homes.
Whatever your reason, I wish you’d find your humour elsewhere. Your belittling is not funny. Your choice of words to describe me, and those experiencing similar challenges as I, is poor and unacceptable.
When you say/write psycho and bipolar to describe people you do not like, understand or agree with, you too are perpetuating the shame. You cannot use a term like bipolar derogatively to describe the action of a politician without hindering my existence.
Have you not heard of words like vacillation? Double-minded? Conflicted? Are you that unaware or inconsiderate? Should I call you “stupid” to get your attention?
If you are really honest, I may be considered no less or no more paranoid, spastic, childish, troubled, insecure, nor weird than you. But you believe that because I live with a properly treated illness for which I’ve decided there’s no reason to feel ashamed and to speak openly, that somehow you have the right to judgment.
And while in managing my health a particular symptom may for a while make me seem unpredictable, unapproachable, unstable, unhappy, or unfair, can you afford sufficient brain cells to understanding that isn’t who I am but only what I’m experiencing for a moment?
And when, because of your simple-mindedness, lack of compassion, kindness, and forgiveness you cannot see past the length of your little finger that you’re as much a “head case” as you consider me, should I label you too?
How about if those of us who live full lives managing a mental health issue decided to stigmatise you? What things/names shall we call you? Unlearned? Uneducated? Simpleton? Should we mock you because you belong to a group with no distinguishing features—good or bad?
Thankfully, those of us living with varying disabilities have all learned something about compassion. While we may be the ones behind the “fault line” of your perfect world, it is us who become your teachers helping you to connect with you own humanity.
So you stigmatise me. I cannot stop you, only you can do that. But I live in the continuous hope that you see and understand you are doing us no good—not me, not you, not the world we share. All you do is perpetuate the unnecessary shame of what I experience and already find so much resistance in others to accept as genuine illness that can be treated and cured.
• Caroline C Ravello is a strategic communications professional and media practitioner with over 30 years of proficiency. She has been living/thriving with mental health issues for over 35 years.