I was recently browsing the blog of Pete Earley, the author of the book Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness, and I came across a post on a recent Manhattan Institute report criticizing Mental Health First Aid (MHFA). The Manhattan Institute is a conservative think tank, and I’ve previously taken issue with …
NIMBYism, the idea that certain development projects are okay, but Not In My BackYard, is discrimination with a prettier hat on. NIMBYs don’t come right out and say the actual reasons for their opposition; instead, they offer other reasons, perhaps to reduce their own cognitive dissonance because they don’t want to think of themselves as …
No One Cares About Crazy People is Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author Ron Powers’ exploration of his two sons’ journeys with schizophrenia, combined with a sweeping social history of mental health care and attitudes towards those with mental illness. He skillfully interweaves these separate threads, drawing the reader along from the early …
I consider myself a mental health advocate, but what does that actually mean? It probably means different things to different people, but let’s chat about it. What a mental health advocate is Before we get to my definition, here’s what a couple of other sources have to say. “Mental health advocates are heroes — individuals …
Words interest me, which I suppose makes sense given that I do a lot of reading and writing. I’m particularly interested in the power that some words have, how we decide how much power to give them, and what informs our choices about what words to use. The idea of language reclamation seems quite appealing …
The raging mouse infestation on the ward where I was recently hospitalized strikes me as something that wouldn’t be allowed to continue on a non-psychiatric unit, but I’m guessing that stigma stops anyone from paying attention to it happening on a psych ward. This is what I’ve come up with so far to email to …
A Mouse-Infested Psych Ward: Does No One Care About Crazy People? Read More »
Stigma is a big deal for those of us dealing with mental health issues. I’ve written about it in my latest book, A Brief History of Stigma, but there are a lot of other people talking about it too. Here are some great quotes on mental illness stigma that I’ve come across. “The problem with …
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 …
Inaccurate & Damaging Mental Illness Stereotypes Read More »
Recent discussions in the blogosphere have got me thinking about the different ways that different people may use the same words. When it comes to mental health conditions, there are technical medical/psychiatric/psychological definitions of terms, but those aren’t necessarily the definitions that people are using in casual conversations. Then there are connotations to words that …
How We Talk About Mental Illness: Definitions vs. Connotations Read More »
A lot of us in the mental health blogging world are already engaged in advocacy in terms of raising awareness, providing information, and supporting others living with mental illness. There’s another kind of advocacy, though, that many of us (including myself) don’t typically engage in, which is political advocacy. Quorum.us says “Political advocacy is an …
Political Advocacy to Challenge Mental Illness Stigma Read More »
