EvangelineG|1428434073|3858097 said:House Cat|1428427563|3858033 said:It is this very human experience that makes me completely intolerant to any stigma toward the mentally ill. Calling someone "psycho" or "crazy" is minimizing what is happening to these people. When someone goes psychotic, there is a good chance that they will lose everything. I used to be a part of a message board like this for people with mental illness. Many times when a spouse would go psychotic, the other spouse found that fact overwhelming, would try to hold on for a while, but would eventually divorce. Not that the psychosis was a permanent condition, but the mental illness was. People who have less than a marriage and go psychotic lose jobs, family, custody of children, houses and most of all faith in themselves. Trusting in your gut?? Nope, never again. Trust in your own judgment? Probably not for a very long time. So, to make light of "psycho" is just too much for me because it is making fun of losing everything, especially the self. On a personal note, I have been recovering from my episode for 11 years now and I STILL have a very long way to go and I work VERY hard at it. I didn't lose my loved ones and had a lot of support, I can't imagine what it would be like for those who don't have what I have.
When mental illness is made fun of and stigmatized, it keeps people from seeking help. When people with mental illness don't seek help, suicide is a possibility.
Making fun of the homeless is another thing that I can't abide, considering most of them are suffering mental illness of some kind.
Saying that you're OCD because you like your house clean is one that is really upsetting. OCD is such a debilitating illness. The sufferers are prisoners of their own thoughts. I get a taste of this every once in a while because people with bipolar disorder have obsessive and unwanted thoughts, especially if trauma is involved. My last stint with this symptom involved me being petrified that there would be a school shooting at my son's school. I could hardly drop him off at school. Each day, I would circle his school in my car and pray. Then I would come home, sit at the kitchen table petrified, wringing my hands until it was time to pick him up. These thoughts overwhelmed me, took over my life for months! If I had OCD, I would be more ritualistic in my soothing.
This was so very, very well said.
I would also like to add using the term autistic or aspie as the newest form of "retarded" or "psycho". Or using either term to off handedly describe a neuro-typical person's mild social struggles/lack of emotion/quirkiness. Not cool.
I have never heard of someone using the terms autistic and/or aspie unless they have actually been diagnosed as such. Do people do that?