A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
Last week I reviewed White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. There were some important concepts that she alluded to but didn’t clearly explain, so I decided to do a post, from a social constructionist viewpoint, about how stereotypes and prejudice develop, and why the difference between implicit and explicit beliefs is important. Our societies create categories… Continue reading Racism, Prejudice, and Implicit/Explicit Beliefs
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms... but not this week. Instead, we'll take a look at ME/CFS, and why it's absolutely not all in someone's head. The National Institutes of Health describes ME/CFS as "a debilitating disease that lacks a universally accepted case definition, cause, diagnosis, or… Continue reading What Is… ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue)
I saw this CBC News story recently about a man who was written off because he was just a psych patient. I wanted to write about it, then promptly forgot about it until suninthespring brought it to my attention. In April 2018, David Pontone went to the emergency department at Humber River Hospital in Toronto,… Continue reading Just a Psych Patient? – Stigma in the ER
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
Lately white privilege has been a hot topic. The people I've come across who take a stance against the idea of white privilege seem to have in common the line of thinking that they haven't been handed anything, so how can they have social privilege? I thought it might be worth reframing social privilege in… Continue reading Another Way of Looking at Social Privilege
Through our shared humanity, all lives matter. So why is it important to talk about Black lives mattering? All lives should matter equally. That is the ideal, and probably most of us would agree that it's the "right" thing. Unfortunately, though, in practice, not all lives are given equal value. An obvious example would be… Continue reading Why I Use My Voice to Say Black Lives Matter
- I've seen ableism being mentioned on Twitter a number of times lately. Aside from the obvious meaning, I wasn't familiar with in a mental health context. This post will explore what ableism means for people with psychiatric disabilities. Defining ableism An article on the Center for Disability Rights website describes ableism this way: Ableism… Continue reading Ableism: The Assumptions People Make About Disability
Time.com Not long ago, a photo was forwarded to Time.com from a 2001 yearbook of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who was a teacher at the time, dressed in an Aladdin costume that included brownface/blackface makeup. It caused quite a stir, with some people criticizing him as being racist. Since it's Halloween, it seems like… Continue reading Halloween, Blackface, and Cultural Appropriation
Black feminist researcher Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw first proposed the concept of intersectionality in 1989 by to represent the many different layers of social stratification that can combine to disadvantage people. This includes factors like race, sexual orientation, social class, age, disability, and gender. Expanding on this concept, sociologist Patricia Hill Collins described the intersectional points as the… Continue reading Intersectionality and What it Means for Mental Health
Canadian Office of the Ombudsman for Mental Health Employers aren't supposed to discriminate against people with mental illness. In fact, it's often against the law. Yet employment discrimination happens and is a form of structural stigma, so what do we do about it when it does? Canadian human rights legislation In Canada, provincial human rights… Continue reading Mental Illness and Employment Discrimination