Simple Country Boy
Monday April 07, 2008 Like you, I either am now or may soon be crazy, psycho, sicko, whacko, a nut case, headed for the looney bin and if you're a member of Active Minds you're with me.
Those terms mean only that each of us has a living, organic brain which is prey to illnesses to which misguided stigma is attached.
Active Minds was first organized because that stigma kills by discouraging the mentally ill from seeking timely, effective treatment, and by burdening with unearned shame some who do seek treatment.
There is no more legitimate shame in mental illness than there is in the common cold, yet the stigma persists. Any of use who give it nurture risk having on our hands the blood of friends and loved ones whom more freely given acceptance would have saved.
Those are not your hands at which I gaze. My maternal grandfather killed himself not long before Christmas four decades ago when I was a freshman at North Carolina State University, and I have come to believe that with a little more understanding of chronic depression and rejection of prevailing prejudice about mental illness, I could have pulled him through.
Active Minds was founded by Alison Malmon after her older brother, Brian killed himself when in March of 2000, when he was a 22-year-old college student and she was a college freshman. That was one year after the First U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Mental Illness addressed stigman as a pervasive evil.
She explains that Brian developed symptoms of a schizoaffective disorder, was hearing voices and was having suicidal thoughts while a student at Columbia University in New York. Because of the stigma, he hid them until even treatment could not make the illness bearable.
Most of those who blog here follow someone who defied the tabu of his era, laid hold of the leper and healed him.
Surely together and with our friends we can remove that poisonous leper's mark from diseases of the mind so that it deters no one else from either seeking needed treatment or reaching out to someone in need.
We can save for more good work and joy lives that might have been lost to despair, among them always potentially our own.
Posted by Buster ( Apr 07 2008, 06:10:20 PM EDT )
Permalink Comments [4]
Trackback: http://journal.biblicalrecorder.org/br/buster/entry/mental_illness_stigma_kills
Comments are closed for this entry.
I really appreciate this post. I spent 23 years wanting to die before want deciding I wanted to live. I will spare you the details or what it took for me to come out of that depression. Two things I will say: 1) Depression can be overcome, both with and without meds - everyone is different; 2)Depression can exist in those who are in Christ - the two are not mutually exclusive, contrary to some Fundamentalist beliefs.
I would also like to say something to those who have lost a loved one to suicide. When we lose someone to suicide it is tempting to place blame, whether it be placed on self, someone close to us, or even a healthcare worker, counselor or pastor. Blame is not to assigned.
More often than not the one has taken his or her life takes with them all the answers as to what could have been done to help them and to keep them from wanting to hurt themselves. Could more have been done? Without a doubt, more could always be done, but rarely are depressed people willing to let family or friends in on their needs. In my opinion the best thing to do is learn from the experience, and help others who the Lord allows to cross your path. "What if" speculation is not based on the truth and if left unchecked can do its own damage. Do what you can to help others, starting with ditching the map for the guilt trip.
As always, I am
Wading
Posted by Tim Wade on April 10, 2008 at 11:32 AM EDT #
As email notice of your comment arrived, I was writing someone who discovered this morning that a friend's suicide was among the N&O documented as having occurred too soon after discharge from Umstead Hospital (http://tinyurl.com/3ntnuk).
Their friend died alone in a hotel room.
She died after having been turned out of the hospital where she went for help, and then left to struggle alone.
You are exactly right that those in crisis are often unwilling to share.
For good reason.
Whole books full of data I have come across since writing the post above says the intensity of our collective prejudice against mental illness usually makes sharing a wound rather than a source of comfort.
The data says those who "tell" usually see immediate, painfully visible negative reactions from the people in whom they are investing trust.
You called me back to myself where you said our calling in this is to "help others whom the Lord allows to cross your path."
That gave me new heart on this day when my anger at evidence of deadly, ongoing neglect threatened to bear me away. Effective witness delivered just in time.
Posted by buster on April 10, 2008 at 02:30 PM EDT #
I can't help but wonder where you have been, lately. If you would, please, drop me a line and let me know how you are doing.
Tim
brotherwade@charter.net
Posted by Tim Wade on April 29, 2008 at 09:40 AM EDT #
It has been an honor to work with you and the others here, many of whom have moved on to blog elsewhere and some of whom, to my enduring dismay, have fallen silent.
Certainly it is in support of you and the others that I have blogged here for so long, and a great deal of late. ... until very recently.
Much as I would like to continue, other compelling responsibilities forbid it.
I am at the moment baffled about how to proceed.
Content here is, under the founding agreements, copyright the users.
We can leave it here for as long as this blog space survives, move it elsewhere, delete it or some combination of those things.
If I cannot blog here, should I move the content to another blog space where I might better preserve your valuable comments and those of others?
Apparently no one in the history of this blog space has done that.
In some cases, moving the content was simply unnecessary, because every post here was cross-posted elsewhere.
Others may have considered it and found that doing so is more difficult than it might seem.
In considering this comment, I found to my astonishment that a few apparently deleted their well-wrought work on the way out the door.
Life sometimes requires departures of us.
I respect your opinion.
Posted by Buster on April 30, 2008 at 09:37 AM EDT #