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”.

We who suffer mental illness not only have to deal with horrific suffering and medication side effects, but we suffer as a persecute minority. It is socially acceptable to make fun of “crazies”,”loony tunes”, “psychos”, “bananas”, “nutbars”, whackos”. The sigma can be subtle also. Even saying you’re depressed may spark people into instant sermonizing. Have you noticed that when you have an emotional breakdown everybdoy instantly becomes amateur psychologists? You get tons of home spun advice, but not much help or listening going on.

There’s not a lot of sympathy out there if you should become suicidal either. Most people say that you’re just bluffing and that if you talk about suicide, then you really don’t want to die. However, studies have shown that most people who have killed themselves always leave clues and talk about suicide before dying.

It’s shocking to discover first hand that most people are incredibly ignorant about mental illness and hold to myths from the Dark Ages. Even more frightening, a lot of them don’t want to be educated about it. This is not because of a lack of information either. Rahter it seems to be a closed mindedness to the subject — an attitude of “I’ve got my own problems and I deal with them, don’t bother me with yours.” Our society gives the most positive reinforcement to those who are healthy, wealthy, and upbeat. The mentally ill are a target for stigmatization because we are often poor, depressed, and unemployed — divested of power. In short, society preys on the mentally ill more than the mentally ill prey on society. Have you felt the stigma lately?

Tags: mental illness, prejudice, stigma

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.