Mental Health Awareness Means Watching Our Words
Until we get clearer with our vocabulary, we will be stuck with stigma
May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
It is a time to increase knowledge about mental illness-its staggering impact on sufferers, its stunning frequency and significant disability. It is an attempt to challenge long held stigmas that have been attached to illnesses and keep people from seeking treatment.
Stigma is often internalized, adding “insult to injury” to people who already feel pretty bad about themselves. Stigmatizing people keeps them at arm's length and leads to indifference, or outright hostility to their struggles. It creates an “Us” vs. “Them” setup.
Stigma is a fear and ignorance based set of beliefs that attempt to make them feel like they couldn’t possibly be Us. This often negatively affects things like the creation of meaningful therapeutic contacts and programs, and the funding necessary for the humane treatment of people who suffer from these illnesses.
We who are sufferers and healers have got to take on some of the more subtle forms of stigma, and actively work against them. They are rooted in the language we use to describe people who have various disorders. It’s more difficult than correcting someone who says something…
