The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the articles contained in it from the perspective of someone with mental illness, and throw in some assorted other observations as well. Text in italic font is the actual … Continue reading Human Rights and Mental Illness
The concept of intersectionality was first proposed in 1989 by black feminist researcher Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw 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 … Continue reading Intersectionality and what it means for mental health
The emerging blogger series is aimed at community building through giving mental health bloggers who are early in their blogging evolution the opportunity to have their work seen by a wider audience. It's also a way to introduce you as a reader to some newer members of our community. This post is by Tshidi of … Continue reading Emerging Blogger Series: Tshidi
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. NIMBYs' arguments may … Continue reading NIMBYism and mental health housing
It's time for another week of Working On Us, a series of mental health prompts from Beckie at Beckie's Mental Mess. Please see her post for more details. Prompt #1 – Questions: How do you deal with the Stigma surrounding your mental disorder/illness? The stigma that I've experienced has come in spurts rather than … Continue reading Working on us – mental health prompt
While there is debate over the roles of biological susceptibility and psychosocial factors in triggering the onset of mental illness, it's also worth giving some thought to how the illness experience is shaped by social factors vs. biologically-based symptoms. Once we are ill, we experience symptoms that are influenced by neurophysiological processes, regardless of whether … Continue reading Can the social and biological aspects of mental illness be separated?
As a nurse in my province (British Columbia, Canada), if I am hospitalized for mental illness then the provincial Health Professions Act requires the hospital to report me to the nursing regulatory college, and the college must treat this as a complaint about my fitness to practice. This ends up with being offering the non-choice … Continue reading Doing My Bit in the Fight Against Stigma
There are certainly some good things about social media, but it also provides an opportunity for stupidity to get much greater exposure than it deserves. Some people would likely have a platform to reach large numbers of people even if it weren't for social media. But the average science-naïve person who thinks that snow in … Continue reading Should ignorance be ignored or challenged?
Your Mental Health and You is written by Sandy Pace, whose blog I've followed for some time. He has a degree in psychology, lives with ADHD, and has experienced addiction. The book covers various areas of your life and your thinking where you could make changes to promote better mental health. It's immediately clear how passionate … Continue reading Book Review: Your Mental Health and You
People tend to fear the unknown. Psychosis is arguably the group of symptoms that the average person finds the most frightening when it comes to mental health problems. There is stigma associated with many/most/all mental health conditions, but psychosis kicks it up a notch. As a quick explanation, psychosis refers to a cluster of symptoms … Continue reading Why psychosis scares people
I first heard of the book Written Off: Mental Health Stigma and the Loss of Human Potential by Philip T. Yanos on a blog post by Don't Stigmatize Me. It immediately went on my list of books to read, but it's taken a while to get around to it, and I ended up getting a … Continue reading Book review: Written Off
Harm reduction is most often used in reference to addictions. The idea is to accept that the user is continuing to use because that is what's currently most able to meet their needs, and then identify ways in which they can do so that minimizes associated harms. Harm reduction is a widely accepted public health … Continue reading Applying harm reduction to self-harm
The emerging blogger series is a way to give mental health bloggers who are early in their blogging evolution the opportunity to have their work seen by a wider audience. It's also a way to introduce you as a reader to some new bloggers you may not have discovered yet. This week, we have Nathan … Continue reading Emerging Blogger Series: Nathan
Language matters when it comes to talking about suicide, particularly when it's mentioned in the media. Sometimes, though, I wonder if getting too nitpicky about language is counterproductive. After all, as stigma researcher Patrick Corrigan says, stigma gets attached to labels but is not a product of those labels. On Twitter I recently came across … Continue reading How picky should we be about suicide-related language?
Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse is a documentary, available on Amazon Prime, about a man with schizophrenia who was killed by police in Portland, Oregon. This film was funded by The Mental Health Association of Portland and over 1500 individual supporters, which I thought was pretty impressive. It's an extremely disturbing example … Continue reading Alienation and brutality