Last edited Sat Oct 4, 2014, 08:09 PM - Edit history (1)
It's also about discrimination.
Stigma is both too nice word and a veil that hides reality. It often masks more direct speech about what is certain prejudice and discrimination against persons who have mental disorders.
Last month we had mental illness awareness. Who is aware? How many Americans know the color ribbon for mental illness is blue (yes, it exploits a pun) What MLB or NFL sponsorship was there? What was the national discussion about?
Well, it was mostly about stigma. Stigma in the minds of the mental health industry is about patients not seeking treatment. That's true, but that is also an economically strategic, perhaps somewhat self-serving, consideration of people who earn their living treating it. Most of the national discussion that occurred during 'awareness' last month was about the need for treatment.
How does one not see that as the influence of industrial bias within well-meaning phrases, a bias that doesn't engage serious daily problems that lack industrial interests?
For persons with mental disorders the problem in their daily lives is very much prejudice and discrimination. It's about life representing pejorative adjectives, it's about the shunning, the isolation and the denial of opportunity. The nation can't understand unless the national conversation includes that reality.
The problems include the real world consequences of discrimination and pushing persons to the side of society. A reality that includes, on average, 12% shorter life-expectancies.
Small steps are needed, but what? More blue ribbon wearing during September, more newspaper columns about need for treatment?
Or maybe more people taking a few days off from pervasive use of pejorative adjectives that catapult common misconceptions that the mentally ill are either monsters or morons?
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