Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
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
I've seen ableism being mentioned on Twitter a number of times lately, and aside from the obvious meaning, it wasn't a concept I was all that familiar with in a mental health context. This post will explore what ableism means for psychiatric disabilities. An article on the Center for Disability Rights website describes ableism this… Continue reading Ableism: The Assumptions People Make About Ability (and Disability)
Image by Niek Verlaan from Pixabay NIMBYism is a fascinating phenomenon. NIMBYs, or people think that something is okay just as long as it's Not In My BackYard, cover discrimination with a thin veneer of civility and acceptability. Among the many manifestations of this is with regards to social housing, including supported housing for people with mental illness.… Continue reading NIMBYism and Mental Health Housing
I was inspired to write this post after reading the book The Stigma Effect: Unintended Consequences of Mental Health Campaigns. It's written by psychologist Patrick Corrigan, whose research on stigma I first encountered when I was working on my Master's thesis. In it, he challenges a lot of commonly held ideas about how we should… Continue reading How Can We Fight Stigma Most Effectively?
This is what I learned about love and acceptance from a man with schizophrenia.