A safe place to talk openly about mental health & illness
The International Hearing Voices Movement (InterVoice) seeks to normalize, depathologize, and destigmatize the experience voice-hearing, and also provide support to people who hear voices, see visions, etc. InterVoice is based in the UK. There are also 28 national networks, including the Hearing Voices Network in the UK and Hearing Voices Network USA. The movement believes… Continue reading A Look at the Hearing Voices Movement
Stigma is a social phenomenon that encompasses stereotypes, prejudiced attitudes based on those stereotypes, and discriminatory behaviours. There are a lot of anti-stigma advocates, both organizations and individuals, focusing on word usage and what to say or not say about mental illness. This is sometimes referred to as word policing or language policing. Sometimes, those… Continue reading Stigma, Word Policing, and Targeting the Wrong Audience
This post isn't about saying that suicide is something people should choose, or that it's a good choice, or that it's a choice that they want to have on the menu. I'm writing this because, while it's much more complicated to get into the element of choice, I believe that it's inaccurate to say that… Continue reading Is Suicide a Choice? (Regardless, It’s Not Selfish)
In Braving Bipolar: A Family Journey and Guide, Stephanie Schlosser shares her experiences with bipolar disorder in order to support others who have the disorder, provide education and insights for those who don't, and challenge stigma. The book is broken into two parts. Part I gives a chronological view of how the author's illness developed… Continue reading Book Review: Braving Bipolar
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 1991, the United Nations General Assembly passed a set of principles for the protection of persons with mental illness and the improvement of mental health care. A PDF version is embedded below. The international community will talk the talk when it comes to human rights and mental illness, but they're still a long way… Continue reading The UN’s Position on Human Rights and Mental Illness
I recently came across Manhattan Institute fellow Stephen Eide's 2020 article In Defense of Stigma in the online magazine National Affairs. It had some... odd... ideas about mental illness stigma, so I thought I would explore some of them. Okay, forget about exploring, I'm going to rant. The basic argument in the paper is that… Continue reading In Defense of… Stigma?
StopSIM When Skinny Hobbit shared an iNews article with me the other day about the mistreatment of high-service-needs people with mental illness, I had no idea just how deep of a rabbit hole the whole thing would be. The story of Serenity Integrated Mentoring, the NHS (the UK's National Health Service), and the way the… Continue reading Serenity Integrated Mentoring: Suicide Attempt? Do Not Pass Go
Caz of Mental Health 360º recently wrote about languishing and how people's mental health has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It made me wonder, will this change how people look at mental health and illness? Effects on mental health Isolation, lockdown, and stressors like job loss and financial strain have certainly brought mental health… Continue reading The Pandemic, Mental Health, and Stigma
Now is a far better time to be mentally ill than it was a few hundred years ago. Institutions like the infamous Bedlam were not happy places, and you might just find yourself chained to the wall for years on end. James Norris at Bedlam, circa 1814 In the 1800s, you may have ended up… Continue reading The Downside of Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization