Originally published Reboot role And cross-posted here with their permission.
(Trigger Warning: (Ableist slurs.)
Last week, the The Washington Post Run a version of mine the end Reboot role column How a nervous breakdown helped me cope with my Facebook addiction.
I was excited to see an article of my own in a national paper, only to be pained to discover when I first saw the post that dozens of commenters had already agreed that I was a “nut job” who really needed to get out of his parents’ basement.
As a woman whose ex-husband once posted a 5,000-word article detailing why he believed she suffered from borderline personality disorder, This popular excoriation hardly came as a surprise, although a stinging one nonetheless.
But it still raises a question facing many other writers who have dared to talk about their mental health in a self-compassionate way: When someone calls you crazy in an attempt to stigmatize and silence you, how do you respond?
Lucky for me, I had the chance to meet the author a week before Andrew Solomonits author Several TED talks And Books on mental healthWhen he stopped by my town (which, I should point out, is several thousand miles from my parents’ basement). give a speech Hey Festival in Medellin.
Solomon has made a name for himself as a champion of society’s most marginalized groups, like the book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression And Far from the trees: Parents, children, and the search for identity which pushes readers to examine their reflections on stigmatizing people living with depression, deafness, autism, schizophrenia, Down syndrome, and other exceptional conditions. He aims to help us understand and advance the “universal struggle toward compassion.”
According to Solomon, sympathy Just what everyone who struggles with mental health needs (that’s one in four people worldwide, According to WHO): compassion for ourselves, and also compassion for people who believe we are nutjobs whose voices should be suppressed.
Self-compassion means committing to finding meaning in your own emotional pain.; In the words of Solomon“Thinking, when (the depression) comes again, ‘It’s going to be hell, but I’ll learn something from it.’
But Solomon’s analysis remains unclear about how to respond sympathetically to those who stigmatize those with mental illness—and the role such stigmas play in protecting policies that disproportionately suffer from minimal well-being from such illnesses in the first place.
Solomon advocates a highly clinical, therapy-based approach to the treatment of mental disorders, seemingly oblivious to the fact that such treatment systems are almost entirely unaffordable to billions of people worldwide with little or no access to physical and mental health care, expensive pharmaceuticals, paid medical leave, or a stable family support.
and given that, As mentioned by WHO“Unsustainable socioeconomic stress” is one of the most important causes of mental disorders, meaning that the people who suffer the most from mental illness are also the least likely to access the care they need — and be stigmatized, to boot.
Indeed, it is not a logical stretch to assume that attempts to silence the mentally ill underlie the stigmatization of people. fear – The fear is that such people will not “fit” into the structures established for their care and thus become a social burden that many citizens, social-Darwinist style, would prefer to simply disappear.
In a brilliant recent Article on Open DemocracyEditor Ray Filler points to the devastating consequences of this contemporary politics “where labor market potential is what makes a person worthwhile”:
The silence and social stigma surrounding mental health is a deliberate, product of an institutional refusal to talk about the impact of socio-political conditions. We think some people develop depression or psychosis because of chemical imbalances or personal traumatic experiences. They’re just lazy or making it up. We don’t talk about miserliness, poverty, the demonization of the unemployed – the stigmatization of politically driven least advantaged groups – but is it any wonder that we are unhappy?
In other words, stigma exists to protect the status quo which tells us: If you’re mentally ill, it’s no one’s fault but your own. And if you’re mentally well… well, that must be because of your own ingenuity/love/responsibility/hard work, right?
Or as Filler puts it: “The ‘hard-working family’ (clung to) the myth that misfortune stems from a lack of hard work…(and) kicking against the lesser good feels justified.”
Fortunately, researchers are beginning to pay more attention to the political roots of mental health—and in doing so, are undermining the power of those who would stigmatize the mentally ill.
Even Andrew Solomon, whose research on depression has focused mostly on its non-political determinants, includes an entire chapter in his book on how class affects depression. The Noonday Demon.
The World Health Organization, for its part, did very emphatic links between poverty and mental disorders, and advocates for a rigorous program to promote mental wellness that goes beyond medication and therapy to include support for children and the elderly, women’s socioeconomic empowerment, housing programs, and a stronger safety net in general.
I certainly can’t say that I initially responded to Seven Dozen The Washington Post Commenters call me a nutcase with a sympathetic (and unbiased) understanding of the conservative deployment of mental health stigma in society.
But analysis by writers like Andrew Solomon has helped make one thing clear: Stigmas gain their power by making people feel ashamed. But shame cannot stand in the face of individual and collective compassion.
So I’m now trying to make this choice every day: Let me start with sympathy.
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Samantha Ayler is a freelance American writer, editor and translator from Medellin, Colombia. He has written about politics, immigration, Latin America, and social justice for publications such as NACLA and the New Statesman. You can follow him Facebook And Twitter.
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Previously published at everydayfeminism.com
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