A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
Stereotypes are a way that we store knowledge about social categories. When a category is considered by society to be deviant, such as the group of people who are mentally ill, members of that category tend to be viewed as a homogeneous group that is accurately represented by stereotypes. There may be a grain of… Continue reading The “Good Patient” and Other Mental Illness Stereotypes
I am mentally ill, and I am also a lot of different things. But do people see all of those things, or mostly just the illness? We all have many different identities associated with all the social roles that we play; not identities as in personalities, but bundles of knowledge, expectations, patterns of behaviour that… Continue reading I Am Mentally Ill, and I Am Also… So Many Other Things
I've written before about whether being politically correct is helpful or ineffective, and I wanted to explore the topic a bit more. Personally, I'm inclined to think that it does more harm than good, at least as society currently conceives it. So, is there a better way than political correctness for people to be respectful?… Continue reading Is There a Better Way than Political Correctness?
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
One of the most common and damaging stereotypes about mental illness is that mentally ill people are chronically dangerous and violence-prone (Corrigan & Watson, 2002). This stereotype is especially strongly linked to people with psychosis. Like many stereotypes, it's not true in the vast majority of cases, but the general public may not realize that.… Continue reading Psychotic Does NOT Mean Violent
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is psychological construct. In psychology, constructs are ways to describe patterns of behaviour or experiences so that they can be explored, investigated, and discussed. It's a way of putting a name to things that don't exist in a… Continue reading What Is… a Psychological Construct
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
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 Do Attempts to Sanitize Mental Illness Actually Reduce Stigma?
Public stigma, involving prejudice and discrimination from outsiders that are directed at us, is damaging enough as it is. But sometimes, that stigma gets internalized into self-stigma, an unpleasant gift that keeps on giving. How self-stigma develops Researchers Patrick Corrigan (my academic crush) and Amy Watson described three broad types of reactions by people who… Continue reading How Self-Stigma Happens in Mental Illness
- I've seen ableism being mentioned on Twitter a number of times lately. Aside from the obvious meaning, I wasn't familiar with it 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:… Continue reading Ableism: The Assumptions People Make About Disability