Oops
I wrote a post sometime around March 22, 2013 and posted it, feeling good about my stinging rhetoric advocating against a particular group with whose position I disagree. A week later, I decided on stigma about mental health as my topic for a speech at Emory University’s April 20, 2013 TedX conference. As I was thinking about the topic, it occurred to me that part of the problem is how common derogatory terms related to mental illness are in our vocabulary: “it drove me crazy,” “that’s nuts,” “what a psycho,” and “he/she is a lunatic.” My thoughts flashed back to my blog post, which had the word “lunatic” in the title, no less, and I thought, “gotcha” (or, technically, got me). As I re-read the entire post, I was dismayed and then horrified by the words that I had chosen. Because I deeply disagree with some people in this country and challenge their point of view, I called them “lunatics,” “insane,” “crazy” and “dangerous.” That’s wrong. Period. We have other words for expressing disagreement and we (I) need to use them instead.
For about ten days, I left the post up in its original form to remind myself that for all that I view myself as a mental health advocate, I am just as guilty as the average person when it comes to the words that pop out, particularly when I am angry or upset. After a while, I was flat out too embarrassed to leave the post up, but before I deleted it, I took one more look at the words I had used. In addition to “lunatics,” “insane,” “crazy” and “dangerous,” I found “paranoid,” “maniacal” and “pathological.” I got the message, and I hope that others will too. There will not be an end to stigma about mental health problems in this country as long as these kinds of words are on the tip of our tongues the minute our filter is off.
Our words and our perceptions are one continuous loop. I say, “he’s a jerk,” I hear my words and I make the decision that my target is a jerk. The next time I see that person, I think, “what a jerk” and the cycle continues unbroken. Anybody who has any interest in removing the stigma surrounding mental health needs to start breaking that cycle by cleaning up their language. Me first.