Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
A little while ago, I posted Attitudes About Mental Illness That Make You Go Hmm… based on an article by Heather Stuart, an epidemiologist at Queen's University. She currently holds a Bell Canada Mental Health and Anti-Stigma Research Chair. She's also got some odd ideas about mental illness. Anyway, while researching for my next book,… Continue reading The Ship of Fools and Other Odd Mental Illness Ideas
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 Heidi of… Continue reading Emerging Blogger Series: Heidi (Here Are My Brains)
Mental illness stigma is a very real problem. Those of us living with mental illness usually aren't thrilled when people casually toss around mental illness diagnoses as adjectives, such as "she's so bipolar" or "he's so OCD" or "everyone's a little ADHD." (And you may have noticed this post make a brief appearance yesterday and… Continue reading Stigma Is Bad… Except for one Diagnosis?
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
The wounded healer interview series features people who've dealt with significant mental health challenges, and who also work in a helping role to support the mental health of others. This interview is with Marja Bergen. Image © Marja Bergen 1) Tell us a bit about you and the mental health challenges you’ve faced. I’m 74… Continue reading Wounded Healer Interview: Marja Bergen
Patrick Corrigan has been my research crush for a number of years now. And what is a research crush, you might ask? I like how his mind works. He's a psychologist and stigma researcher, with lived experience to boot. He's one of the most prolific publishers in academic journals that I've ever come across. His… Continue reading The Problem with Language Policing
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is the euphemism treadmill. The term euphemism treadmill was coined by psychologist and linguist Stephen Pinker in a 1994 article in the New York Times. It refers to a process by which words that are used as a… Continue reading What Is… the Euphemism Treadmill
Photo by Robin Hammond, The Guardian, Feb 3/20 – small, low-resolution version included here as fair use for critical analysis of subject matter of high public significance The man in the photo above has a chain around his ankle, and he's chained to the tree he's leaning against. That's his wife, and he has a… Continue reading Mentally Ill People In Chains – A Disturbing Reality
IASP Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. It's also National Suicide Prevention Week and National Suicide Prevention Month (that's a lot of awareness!). I thought it would be a good time to talk about suicide attempt survivors. The term "suicide survivor" isn't generally used for people who've lived through suicide attempts. Rather, it's the term… Continue reading World Suicide Prevention Day: A Look at Suicide Attempt Survivors
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 Is It Helpful to Sanitize Mental Illness?