During the teenage years of my life my limited understanding of mental illness was always expressed as ‘They’re mad!’ – that was it! In its entirety! Anything else known as a mental illness was, to me, just some person faking sick to get a day or week off work.
‘Mad woman’ is what I said to my primary school friends as we walked past Lulu in her familiar haunt in Brixton market. By the age of seven I had already learned, with pride, to label someone as being ‘mad’, ‘crazy’ or ‘loopy’ instead of recognising a mental illness. ‘Brixton Lulu’ was the target of my newly inherited extended vocabulary. Just like ‘Tony Hop-it’ and ‘Skanka’ previously, Lulu was introduced to the children of the neighbourhood as ‘mad!’ and with a derogatory nick name.
This is my earliest memory of being taught the language and behaviour of discrimination towards people with a mental illness. As I grew up, it didn’t get any better. I read in stories the signs to look for in how ‘mad people’ acted. I learnt from TV what ‘crazy people’ looked like. And in movies I was shown how to avoid or deal with ‘loopy people’: Run like hell! Ridicule them! Or kill them! (Not necessarily in that order.)
Anything other than ‘mad’ was a fake ‘madness’, and so my responses were predictable. If I heard ‘anxiety’, I would say “just get over it!” If I heard ‘depression’, I would say “go watch a comedy!” If I heard ‘panic attack’, I would say ‘calm down dear!’. My bigotry, arrogance, and ignorance were breathtakingly astonishing.
Take anxiety for example. A few people, during my early years in the world of employment, who experienced anxiety, I regarded as lazy, skivers, and people who didn’t want to do any work – how wrong could I have been!
The real problem wasn’t what I read in the papers, what I saw on TV or what I watched in movies. The real problem was me! As a teenager I was in a perfect position to educate myself on mental illness – but I chose not to. I chose the lazy, skivers, and people who didn’t want to do any work’s method of learning about mental illness.
My chosen method to learn about mental illness was to believe everything I read in the papers, take as true everything I saw on TV, and copy from the movies how to respond to mentally ill people. My lack of understanding of mental illness was everybody else’s fault and not mine.
You see, the problem with discrimination is not what it says about people with a mental illness but more about the people who carry out these acts – like me! It exposes our bigotry, arrogance, and ignorance. Let alone our insensitivity, stupidity, carelessness.
I changed as a person when I became 20-something. Not because I wanted to or made an effort to change, but because I got to know people who had mental illnesses – I got to know them! Not the ‘Hello, how are you’ type of knowing you. The real ‘let’s sit down and talk about life, family, and what you’re going through whenever we meet’ knowing you! Over the past 30 years I have gotten to know many people with a mental illness and they are nothing like what I have read about in the papers, have seen on TV, and still see in movies. They are caring, loving, sensitive, fun to be with, honest, compassionate, understanding – and sometimes annoying! They are…like everybody else! – and with better social skills than me.
Just this act of getting to know someone for who they are, what they are, and what they are going through was a life changing experience for me. What a positive difference getting to know someone with a mental illness can make in our attitude, behaviour, and comments – instead of getting to know them from what we read, watch, and hear.
The shame of this is that with all the education I have received around mental health, I still have the seeds of stigmatisation and discrimination that were planted in me at such a young age. And in my moments of thoughtlessness, stupidity, and inattention, the seeds of destruction involuntarily surface!
How to discriminate against someone with a mental illness is taught to children at a young age. The media and authors of books have a lot to answer for in how they assist in teaching the art and skill of discrimination to children.
To Becca, it was nice getting to know you.
