supporting your right to just say 'no' since 1964

My mental health is greatly improved when I pay absolutely no attention to DJ Jaffe.

repetition-is-holy:

I completely don’t buy the argument of this HuffPo article.  The author asserts that the stigma around mental health, just like around cancer and left handedness, is dead.  And that if it isn’t, that we can just declare it dead and move on and there are more important issues around mental health to be focusing on.

I want to know if this author has ever read or listened to a news feature about a violent crime, particularly one performed by a white person.  The first question asked is almost always if they suffer from mental illness.  Or, alternatively, if a person with a mental illness commits a violent crime, the two become immediately associated, even if they aren’t actually related.

Stigma takes a different from today, maybe, but it still exists.  We, the community of people with mental illnesses, experience stigma based on how comfortable people are with us.  Are we taking our medication?  If we still don’t seem right, maybe we should take more?  Other people need us to make them feel comfortable and they force that expectation on us, sometimes against our will.

(I’m not even going to talk about the recent study that using a biological argument for mental illness when explaining it to someone, rather than a trauma based explanation, actually increased stigma.)

Stigma dead?  Absolutely not.  Different?  Maybe.

We still aren’t considered safe or reliable.  Mental health “problems” become both scapegoats and deep flaws in our identities, when so often they are a rich part of how we experience the world, even if that experience is not wholly positive.