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Stigma is something that can be seen outwardly like when a family member avoids you due to your depression or you’re passed over for a promotion because your coworkers discovered you’re diagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s also seen in public perceptions as noted in the Surgeon’s General report where 60% of people felt like people with schizophrenia behaved violently.
But the biggest danger of mental health stigma is when it’s felt inwardly. Because no matter how unfairly people treat you ourwardly, it’s nothing compared to the effects of feeling the stigma inside.
If you’re anything at all like me, looking for something to watch on TV is not so much a matter of choosing the ideal option as it is determining the selection that’s least revolting.
I remember a day when there were just three competing major networks, a few ridiculous UHF channels that showed Godzilla movies, and Public Television, which nobody watched. That was it. (This was before PBS became cool. Back then their only program was hosted by a lonely old man in overalls who showed viewers how to make birdhouses.)
The explosion of options seemed to usher in a new age of video entertainment. There are now 100s of channels competing for the viewer’s attention and amazingly the vast majority of programming is what is euphemistically referred to as “reality TV” – which means, in English, programming that will never contain anything even remotely associated with reality.
Today, you can be immersed in shallow misrepresentations of all sorts of lives including: the wretched drug-addled remains of rock “musicians” and those unfortunate enough to be related to them, exterminators, crab fishermen, ex-cons who escort pit bulls, midgets riding miniature tractors, fat campers, pathological hoarders, competitive eaters, and sewage farm attendants…among others.
And so I survey this landscape of hideous refuse and deep within me swells yet again the furious resentment which can only be felt by those who have suffered beneath the cloud of stigma following me and my fellow whackadoomians and I ask – If they have time to showcase every last scrap of humanity down to the very bottom of the barrel why oh why have they no room, no time, for the mentally ill?
What a piss-off of a title, right? Sorry! Feel free to skip to some of my more lighthearted posts: I think I have one involving flying a kite and eating three meals a day. But we cannot pretend that living with a mental illness is smooth sailing; it can ruin your life if not treated properly.
Externalizing Fears
Lets face it, some fears are ridiculous. Irrational, untrue and vague, they plague us anyway. One of the best things you can do is externalize them: Name the fear and be specific. (Fears like to be vague about themselves, evasive they gain power over us. Exposed, we undermine that power.)
Take the fear outside your identity, see it as a fear, and give it a name: (i.e., fear that you forgot the door unlocked, fear of not being cool enough, fear of spiders, fear of getting robbed, fear of a loved one leaving you, fear of looking fat).
Today I was eating a grilled cheese sandwich in a local restaurant when two waitresses pointed their finger in my direction, laughed and spoke about the “voices in their head.” This is by no means the first time I had been harassed by strangers for the things that I write, and I am sure it will not be the last. I am, after all, a man who represents one of the most feared and stigmatized groups of people in the world. Most people I know have been very supportive of my writing and advocacy, but there are also those who cannot break down the wall of stigma and discrimination.
Stigma attached to major depression and other mental illnesses can be as difficult to deal with as the illness itself. The idea that "they won't understand" keeps depression sufferers silent and compounds their sense of isolation and negative thinking patterns.
You have nothing to lose by facing your traumatic memories; you can always go back to what you were doing before. But you have peace to gain. It's hard work, but it's worth it.
I am single. I have been single for a long time, actually. It’s OK; I don’t mind it that way. I have my dalliances, I have my friends and I have my cats. It’s a touch stereotypical, but it’s my life.
I have, however, fallen victim to an irrational line of thought from time to time – I really want to couple. Some of this desire is completely rational. It’s normal to want to spend Sundays in bed with someone and have someone to share orange juice with in the mornings.
What isn’t rational, though, is the idea that a relationship will make me “happy,” will make me “better.” In times when bipolar feels it’s darkest, more than anything I just want someone to hold onto even if holding onto someone doesn’t work.
Holding onto someone, however special, will not cure bipolar disorder.
I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago-- "Mental Illness--Acting on Impulse!"--but this post is different. I am not focusing on impulsive behavior such as overspending, abusing drugs and alcohol and self-medicating moods. I want to talk about acting on emotions.
"We're all human beings too, no matter what anybody says."
These are the words of "P.G.H.", age 16, whose art is part of a traveling exhibition called Voices:The Art of Children, Adolescents and Young Adults Touched by Mental Illness now displayed at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, CT. The exhibit will be there through noon on April 13th, 2012, and then will travel to other areas of Connecticut.
Young adults diagnosed with mental illness often feel their potential is lost in the sea of crisis, diagnosis, treatment, and stigma. Especially stigma. Ann Nelson, founder of advocacy organization A Compassionate Mind, wants to create opportunities that, in her words, "offers a voice for youth living with a mental illness utilizing their artist gifts as an awareness and stigma reduction tool."
I haven't had a drink in 9 years and two months.
I Googled everything on the subject and have come to the conclusion it is not a relapse.
However, I am going to read labels more carefully!