A Phrase To Renounce For 2014: ‘The Mentally Ill’

[kangofu]

A Phrase To Renounce For 2014: ‘The Mentally Ill’
Source - WBUR - Common Health (Boston's NPR)
By: Carey Goldberg
January 3, 2014 | 1:57 PMI wince every time I read it. So does the president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Paul Summergrad, he says

Comments

[nextdrinksonme]

And I said I agreed with that--go go people first language. I disagree with not using the term mental illness or mental health at all because it sounds scary or 'othering' according to people who are not mentally ill. The focus should be changing the stigma and myths surrounding various mental illnesses, not changing the language to make it sound less 'scary'.

I disagree with not using mental illness as a blanket term considering that most of the various people with various mental illnesses are stigmatized and/or lack resources for treatment and have institutional barriers that many, if not most physical illnesses do not (such as the amount of people with mental illnesses in jail and prisons who wouldn't be there if they were able to have adequate treatment, for example. You don't hear of many people being put in jail for side effects of having untreated diabetes). There are many obstacles that the entire population faces in some way, just like there are obstacles that any large marginalized group face as a generalized group. All people are different, but they can all fall into larger populations that face the same challenges. Talking about mentally ill people as a group in that context is the same as talking about the queer community as a group or women as a group.