Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
A little while ago, I posted Attitudes About Mental Illness That Make You Go Hmm… based on an article by Heather Stuart, an epidemiologist at Queen's University. She currently holds a Bell Canada Mental Health and Anti-Stigma Research Chair. She's also got some odd ideas about mental illness. Anyway, while researching for my next book,… Continue reading The Ship of Fools and Other Odd Mental Illness Ideas
Mental illness stigma is a very real problem. Those of us living with mental illness usually aren't thrilled when people casually toss around mental illness diagnoses as adjectives, such as "she's so bipolar" or "he's so OCD" or "everyone's a little ADHD." (And you may have noticed this post make a brief appearance yesterday and… Continue reading Stigma Is Bad… Except for one Diagnosis?
Recently, I was looking on Debate.org for some Holocaust denier-related willful ignorance, and I figured why not see what the crazies of the non-psychiatric variety had to say about us crazies of the mentally ill variety. Debate.org seems to attract a lot of willfully ignorant blowhards, so this certainly isn't reflective of broader public opinion.… Continue reading Willful Ignorance and Mental Illness Stigma
Patrick Corrigan has been my research crush for a number of years now. And what is a research crush, you might ask? I like how his mind works. He's a psychologist and stigma researcher, with lived experience to boot. He's one of the most prolific publishers in academic journals that I've ever come across. His… Continue reading The Problem with Language Policing
Photo by Robin Hammond, The Guardian, Feb 3/20 – small, low-resolution version included here as fair use for critical analysis of subject matter of high public significance The man in the photo above has a chain around his ankle, and he's chained to the tree he's leaning against. That's his wife, and he has a… Continue reading Mentally Ill People In Chains – A Disturbing Reality
Recently, I came across a post that was a myths vs. facts type deal on mental illness stigma. One of the myths identified was that people with mental illness are disabled. The blogger's response was that on some days, mental illness could make it harder to work for some people, but there are also people… Continue reading Is It Helpful to Sanitize Mental Illness?
An open letter to the Hon. Judy Darcy, British Columbia Minister of Mental Health and Addictions I'm writing to express my dismay that it appears that the Government of British Columbia does not intend to take advantage of the modernization of the Health Professions Act to remove section 32(3), which stigmatizes health professionals with a… Continue reading Stigma Enshrined in Law: An Open Letter to BC’s Minister of Mental Health and Addictions
While doing some research for my upcoming book on stigma, I came across a 2004 discussion paper on Stigma and Work. It was written by Heather Stuart, a public health faculty member at Queen's University in Canada. It quickly became clear that the author's PhD in epidemiology didn't prevent her from having some strange attitudes… Continue reading Attitudes About Mental Illness That Make You Go Hmm…
I recently did a post on whether the wording "committed suicide" was likely to be an effective target for anti-stigma messaging. A commenter mentioned that in their home country, suicide was only decriminalized quite recently. That got me curious about where attempting suicide is illegal to this day. Why suicide first became illegal The Stanford… Continue reading Where Is Attempting Suicide Illegal?
A still from the surveillance video shows Const. Lacy Browning stepping on student Mona Wang's head after a wellness check by the RCMP on Jan. 20. (Submitted by Bridge Law Corporation) I've written before about defunding the police as a way to approach the mismatch between a police approach and mental health. The picture above from… Continue reading A Police “Wellness Check”/”Arrest” Gone Wrong