On stigma and mental illness.

My partner recently texted me the following article:

Great article. | Sociopaths, Borderlines, and Psychotics: 3 Mental Illnesses We Must Stop Hating On https://t.co/IOfIaxjNRp @evrydayfeminism

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) April 23, 2016

It's a good sentence-a-paragraph article that highlights a bunch of the contradictions our society faces as it tries to come to terms with mental illness and personality disorders. 

Here's thepassage that stands out most to me:

Stigma accompanies all mental illness to some extent, but in recent years, certain mental illnesses have been getting better press than others. Depression, for example, has been frequently covered in the mainstream media, from webcomics to feature-length documentaries. 

Such news pieces tend to follow the social justice trend of arguing for the destigmatization of mood disorders like depression, arguing against the idea that depressed people are responsible for their experience — rather, depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Yet similar media treatment and public dialogue has rarely been extended to mental illnesses that are not as easy to empathize with. A relatively large number of people, I’d bet, are willing to admit that they empathize with depression because they themselves have felt depressed at some point or other.

I somehow doubt that a similarly large number of people would say that they feel compassion for psychopaths, pathological liars, or narcissists.   

In a society enamored with the rhetoric of positive thinking, so-called “toxic people,” like those with the disorders I mentioned above, have become the bogeymen and witches of the mental health conversation — despite the fact that nearly one in ten people in the United States of America are estimated to exhibit traits associated with these conditions. 

On the flip side, popular culture is obsessed with caricatured or fetishized representations of violent psychopathy and psychosis, examples of which have appeared in TV and movies for the past century: Dexter, Girl Interrupted, Law and Order: SVU, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal are just the first few titles that spring to mind.

It wouldn’t be politically correct (at least in the left-leaning circles I run in) to say that depressed or anxious people don’t deserve empathy, social support, or friendship.

Yet one of the worst descriptors that even political-correctness social justice warrior diehards choose to bestow on someone is the term “psychopath.”

This attitude extends to mental health professionals as well, where the term “borderline” (personality disorder) is often used as shorthand for “uncooperative patient whom I don’t like.

It makes sense. We have these blatant contradictions that we cater to and idolize: we hate narcissists, but raise them up to lead our companies and parties; we hate psychopaths, but read books about them and follow them in art.

It's a sort of "othering" where we fetishize unconventional behaviour. It's a sort of At least I'm better than that, or I wish I could do that, but I'm so glad I can't. It's some messed up stuff.

The thing about these sort of mental health definitions is that they are culturally dependent. I don't think narcissists in the West are necessarily narcissists in the East, for example. 

Nonetheless, some cultural compassion is needed for those we've pushed into cultural boxes. I, as a teacher, know full well that plenty of these ADHD-diagnosed kids are victims of the school system, its culture, its rituals. Their diagnosis would be unrecognizable outside the regimented strictures of the classroom. They might just be seen as creatives, shamans, warriors, or some other sort of specialization. With the ADHD label, driven by the classroom, they end up miscreants.

I've been listening through Mark Goulston's Talking to Crazy and it's been an eye-opening experience for me. The book articulately makes the case for my own communication problems, which for years I had generally set aside. I already knew that I'd backed myself into corners, that I'd let "my own crazy" get the better of me, but I had no idea as to how I did it. I was clueless. But now I can see how my own desires to please people or counter everything with logic were in themselves irrational. I think I'm starting to be able to determine the differences between logic and rationality, between empathy and sympathy, thanks to this latest round of reading..

And it's giving me a new appreciation for articles like the one above, which try to help people sympathize with people who suffer from mental illnesses, as we define them in our culture.

I don't know if I have any sort of diagnosable mental illness beyond depression, but I do know that my own mindset has exacerbated the people around me. I may not have a mental illness, but it doesn't mean my mental health has been up to snuff. 

One step forward. And another. One step at a time.