Persons with mental illness may be one of the most persecute minority groups. It’s open season jokes and prejudice.

We psychiatric survivors have difficulty explaining to the nonmentally ill about how much we suffer mentally. The problem seems to lie in the fact that the general public has certain specific markers that indicate “illness”. If one is emaciated, has his or her leg in a cast, is sitting in a wheelchair, or is lying in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of all orfices, then to many people that is “real” illness. Mental illness is largely invisible in nature. What is a mentally ill person supposed to look like? We largely look like anyone else. But herein lies the stigma. If you don’t fit the conventional idea of illness then it is assumed you don’t work because you are just malingering, that you are on welfare because you are a bum, and when you can’t function up to par, you are just “irresponsible”. (more…)