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You must be mental
Written by Claire on Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Recently, reading a discussion unrelated to BIID I was struck when someone told someone else “you must be mental” and clearly meant it as an insult.
Actually, I kind of like the person who said it (and for the record, I also like the person that he said it to) although I don’t know either one of them well at all, and have had only brief private exchanges with either. But I very much doubt that he would have said something like that directly to me, knowing that I am indeed mentally ill.
What struck me so much about this random comment is what it implies about what most people really believe about mental illness. The mentally ill are the lowest of the low. They deserve no respect, even from their fellow disabled. If you want to really insult someone, imply that they are mentally ill.
I don’t think the person who said that really thought about it that way. It’s instinctual, it’s just an expression. He wasn’t talking to me and wasn’t taking aim at me or at people who are truly mentally ill. I didn’t even take it personally. But the fact that this insult has indeed become a common expression, has found its way into the collective consciousness, says a lot about the uphill battle that we face.
I often wonder if because I have a mental illness and am open about it, most people who read what I have to say automatically discount it because I’m “mental”, and so how could anything I have to say make any sense or have any value.
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10 Comments
Claire, despite all the soothing rhetoric about those with mental illness being just like you and me (in this case, it’s true…), there is a stigma attached to it that I think is stronger than the stigma attached to physical disabilities.
The mentally ill, untreated and unmedicated, can be physically and psychically dangerous. The mentally ill are unpredictable. Staying away from them seems to be the only way to deal with it - this seems to be the popular line of thought.
I have even known someone with BIID to denigrate my depression and devalue me because of it.
When I applied for jobs, at the advice of an attorney who deals in disability rights issues, I did not say I have a mental illness.
Wheelman, I am not looking for someone to pity me. I am trying my best to make my own way in this world. My brain chemistry is off and because of traumatic events that happened to me, I will likely face the struggle to deal with depression for the rest of my life. Just like nearly everyone else, I’m moving along and doing the best I can with my life. Sometimes it stinks. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s perfect. Those days are rare and precious. Personally, I’m aiming for the good to outweigh the bad and any ‘perfect’ that comes along will be appreciated and savored.
3 On 17 April, 2008, Sophie said:
I personally think refusing to accept I’m mentally ill shows that social stigma against mental illnesses. Merely saying you are different to everyone else shows that you don’t accept everything about you and you would never move forward in terms of a solution.
I am a person who has an emotional disability that expresses itself in a physical way, namely the need to use mobility aids. I am not my disability so be careful about labels please. My name is Brice not BIID.
6 On 18 April, 2008, Sophie said:
I’m glad simply using mobility aids makes you happy but using my wheelchair does not make me happy. I am not who I am meant to be and that makes me very unhappy.
7 On 19 April, 2008, Claire said:
@Wheelman: Well, first of all, have you been at all following the research of McGeoch and Ramachandran? They are most likely PROVING at this moment that BIID is neurological and thus, yes, is an illness. You can call it whatever you want, but you’ll just be proven wrong by science.
Aside from that, if we go around saying that it’s a “lifestyle choice” or whatever, then the people who desperately need help, the ones who NEED to acquire their impairment, will never do so. We need the medical community on board with us before they will ever agree to start treating BIID with surgery. And they will NEVER, EVER do that until BIID gets recognized as a genuine, serious mental illness.
The people who deny that BIID is an illness are a serious danger to the rest of us who are in desperate need of treatment. You are undermining our efforts to obtain that treatment and I will fight you tooth and nail.
Don’t take this personally Wheelman, it’s not meant as a personal attack…it’s just the way I feel.
@Sophie, sorry I might not have been clear in my effort to be brief. What I really need and have always needed is to have had my legs disabled by polio about fifty years ago, enough that I would need braces to stand and crutches to walk. I’m that specific about it because there’s nothing in me that would find satisfaction in losing bladder and/or bowel control, or complete loss of sensation in my legs. Using braces and crutches or a wheelchair gives me relief for as long as I get to do so. I think that this is in part because the braces in themselves produce some impairment. I am unfortunate in never having had enough of a private life to take up full time use of them, which might eventually produce a permanent impairment and dependency on the aids. I have in the past had several opportunities to go crip 24/7 for four or five days at a time, visiting brace buddies I otherwise knew only via the ‘net, and they were glorious times. Am I crazy? Well, yes, but after all these decades of BIID experience I know of no cure for this obsession and compulsion other than to get the body to match the mind.
I’ve always felt that people could relate to my physical disability. No problem there apart from the fact that they sometimes talk to me through the person I’m with. What they can’t relate to is my depression because they can’t see it. I once told my mother that I was taking Prozac and I was banned from the kitchen. Too many sharp knives there. We have so many attitudes to demolish.
i agree with the original post.
it’s like how boys in my school call each other “faggot” and “gay boy” all the time, but if one of the actually came out, no-one would dare insult them with it.
i think it’s intersting that (in english) we still insult each other with such “old” ideas, like gayness, being born out of wedlock, having a mentel illness etc. when now these are more “socially acceptable”.
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1 On 17 April, 2008, wheelman1912 said:
Dear Claire,
It is in my opinion that I believe you cling too strongly to the “mental illness” side of BIID. I mean sure alright you now have a medical term that you can tag how you feel with…but honestly…I believe the reason that it was given a name is just simply so people could explain it to people and have something to label it with. I mean do you honestly believe you are sick? I mean sure you want to truely be disabled yes I understand that…but to say you are mentally ill to me means that you are broken in a bad way and that you need therapy and everyone to feel sorry for you and take pitty on you. To say you are mentally ill to me is to say…hay I am sick…
To me…I believe how you should feel is…ok, I have BIID…I am just different from everyone else, but this is just part of who I am…part of my personality…See I hate people trying to label me with some medical sickness…why…because I am not sick, I am not broken…this is who I am…it’s part of my personality…it’s part of how I was created. I am just different than the other 97% of the people in the world. We are all different in so many ways…just because our difference seams so strange and wierd and unusual doesn’t mean that people have the rigtht to lable us as mentally ill or sick or anything like that…we are just different. We are who we are…How God created us…he gave us this gift…It’s not our fault that the rest of the world doesn’t understand us.
-Wheelman