Mental Illness and the Follies of Our Enemies

Posted on April 23, 2010 in Hatred Liberals & Progressives Stigma Terminology

Not two minutes ago, a liberal tweeter said three words to me: “Michelle Bachmann #psycho”. This is pretty typical fare from certain members of the Twitter Left (and the Twitter Right for their part). When poorly educated, shallow Republican tools speak up, their words are denounced as coming from the mentally ill.

Let me get something clear. I am a progressive. I was a progressive before I went on meds and I am a progressive now. Part of my political ideology impels me to live a life as free of prejudice as possible. Supposedly the woman who vomited this hairball believes in the same principle. I doubt she would attack Michael Steele’s blackness or call Senator Graham a fag. But she doesn’t live it when it comes to the mentally ill. Where we are concerned, the rules change. You can abuse the mentally ill all you want through the indirect means of equating psychiatric diagnoses with the follies of your enemies.

Beatrice Bray speaks to the abuse of psychiatric terms in today’s Guardian:

Newspaper cartoons can be great. They can say the unsayable. They have licence to push the boundaries of taste. Their images can resonate for years. But Martin Rowson’s cartoon “Dressing-up box” (Comment & Debate, 29 March) overstepped the mark.

Rowson had fun depicting different Conservative politicians in fancy dress. They are shown like kids in the playroom. But as one Tory lifts Mrs Thatcher’s moth-eaten blue dress, he shouts: “Hey everybody! This is the ‘psychotic yet tough union basher’ cozzie!”

The use of the word “psychotic” was offensive. You may think this political correctness gone mad, but if you are ill, or have been, you need words to describe your experience to yourself and to others. If for you these words are negative, you will hate yourself. Language can make or break your happiness….

“Bipolar” is a new term which was introduced to replace the stigmatised “manic depression”. This creates a chance to reinvent the illness, but already the new label is becoming tarnished. You cannot separate words from their popular meanings. You have to change attitudes and behaviours as well as words.

Rowson’s cartoon is testament to this, even though he does not sound like the kind of man who would want to disfranchise those of us with severe mental health problems.

We were not Rowson’s target: Margaret Thatcher was. But just to complicate matters we are now championing the honour of Thatcher even though some of us are leftwingers. We do not think that Thatcher, a dementia sufferer, should face misused words of abuse.

Bray ends her article by observing that the three parties in Great Britain have signed a compact agreeing to avoid stigmatizing language in their political debates, campaigns, and other public utterances. When I hear even liberals whine when they are called to task for the abuse of psychiatric terminology, I think it essential that we begin to civilize our language so that people are not made to hate themselves for accidents of genetics.

Stop saying that Michelle Bachmann is insane. She’s not anything like me.