Mental Illness and Glenn Close: Opening Hearts, Minds, and Dialogue
Someday, I will write on this blog about why this issue hits home for me. Not today, but someday. For now, I want to share with you the PSA that I saw last night for the first time and the campaign I learned about a few months ago but forgot amid a period of chaos. I am admittedly the emotional sort, but it’s still not often that something as simple and short as a PSA leaves me choking back tears. But this one, featuring Glenn Close, her sister Jessie, and several other individuals and families living with mental illness, did just that, only a few months after Glenn Close’s similarly themed editorial at Huffington Post left me wanting to hug and cheer her (and her family) on. She said what needed to be said candidly, compassionately, and intelligently. “When it comes to bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress, schizophrenia or depression,” Close pointed out, “an uncharacteristic coyness takes over. We often say nothing. The mentally ill frighten and embarrass us. And so we marginalize the people who most need our acceptance. What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation.”
Among several issues covered in Close’s editorial and tackled by her campaign are the words we use. I’m someone who is keenly aware of the power of language, who writes about the power of language, who lives a life of words, and who knows how hurtful and damaging even the casual use of “crazy,” “lunatic,” and the like, when we’re talking about someone, can be. There’s no way you’d ever hear me use the “r” word (or see me sit by quietly when someone else uses it), for example, yet I still catch myself using these other, also-hurtful-to-people words far too casually, far too often. I cringe in those moments just after I hear or see myself use them, as well as after seeing or hearing them elsewhere, so my use is something I’m working on. I hope it’s something all of us will work on. There are so many ways we perpetuate the stigmas of mental illness, and this is one.
Read the editorial here. Visit the campaign’s site, Bring Change 2 Mind, here. Watch the PSA below. And please, share the video and links in this post with your friends and family. These are things we do not talk about. These are things we must talk about.
Stephanie Ernst
Marji
Kelly G.
Deb
Mary Martin
I use “lame” a lot, as an expletive, as a filler-word. My friend, who is intimately familiar with the disability-rights movement, shared with me how a friend of hers who has CF would take offense at the use of the world while another friend, also with CF and a huge champion of both animal rights & people with disability rights, uses the word, makes it his own. It was an interesting discussion and made me more aware of my use of that particular word (it’s hard to find non-offensive words for my “That’s just silly” verbage). :)
I’m not perfect, nor do I plan on becoming perfect. I’ll still be flippant sometimes and socially awkward. While my own very personal experiences of depression offer me insight on what can hurt even when said jovially, I still fall prey to misusing words and being hurtful myself.
This post is a good reminder to be ever cognizant of what we say and, even more important for me, how we say it.
You might appreciate these ads, Stephanie: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smiteme/tags/rword/
I stumbled upon them some time ago, but have never had an occasion to use them. Very powerful, I think.
I say “crazy” a lot. Or “bananas,” but it’s clear that I mean “crazy” anyway. Must stop that. It’s usually about a behavior “that’s just crazy/bananas!” and not a person. But still. . . What is *wrong* with me–I was raised by a therapist for heaven’s sake!
Meanwhile, when I hear someone, and it’s always a man, call someone “retarded,” I school them, on the spot, in a way that usually shocks the crap out of them.
Thanks for reminding me to pay closer attention to what I say.
Folks might also find the Ableist Word Profiles at FWD/Forward useful.
I love the entry on “hysteria.” Bookmarking that one for future use.
I use the ‘r’ word (retarded) a lot – and this is after/during the four years I spent working as an equine facilitator at a camp for people with both physical and mental disabilities. I’ve tried to cut back, but it crops up from time to time, which given how much I’ve been able to regulate my word usage in regards to other disenfranchised groups, is kinda weird. My only theory is that a lot of the people I have worked with have used it on a regular basis too – almost as a term of endearment in most cases.
The use of words prejudiced against those who behave differently is something more behavioral science programs should cover, that’s for sure. We talk a lot about the stigma of mental illness, but very little about the word choices which help perpetuate the stereotype.
As a 20 year old college student I have to say that words like “lame” and “retarded” are probably much tamer than a lot of inappropriate words people, especially my age, turn into adjectives. Many, many people I know use “rape” or “rape-y” to describe things that are difficult, usually video game related. We’re always going to use words to describe things that are bad, and we aren’t going to settle for bad. If you try to get the kids off of “gay” then they move onto “lame” and when you get them off that they move onto “retarded.” I think sometimes we should be a little bit less sensitive about words that aren’t meant to offend. “Lame” will go out of fashion and who knows what will replace it.
The pejorative use of words such as “gay” and “retarded” and the like may seem “tame” to the average person, but they are anything but tame and harmless to the people they hurt, and “we’re always going to use words to describe things” is not an excuse for continuing to use hurtful words once it’s known that they’re hurtful and for not educating those around us about why they’re hurtful.
“That’s ridiculous”; “that is so wrong”; “that makes no sense” — why aren’t remarks such as these decent-enough replacements for the uber-offensive “that’s retarded”?
The notion that “we should be a little bit less sensitive about words that aren’t meant to offend” is itself offensive to me. The people who are in the positions of power or who aren’t harmed by the words shouldn’t be the ones who get to decide what is OK or what others are too “sensitive” about.
Thank you Stephanie! I wish I was as well spoken as you. You have perfectly captured what I am trying to convey to people when I express to them how uncomfortable/hurt/angry I am when they use the terms ‘gay/rape/retarded/crazy/etc’ as an insult or a joke.
Words ARE important. And no, we should never lighten up or take it easy on people, we have to fight oppression on every front, big or small, in every way we can.