Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

In any man­i­festo for change to­wards a com­pre­hen­sive men­tal health­care sys­tem some changes are eas­i­er than oth­ers.

There are blue­prints for chang­ing laws, rat­i­fy­ing con­ven­tions, ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty for wheel­chair users, ac­cess to pub­lic spaces for an­i­mals ac­com­pa­ny­ing the vi­su­al­ly im­paired, and so much more.

When it comes to chang­ing peo­ple's hurt­ful at­ti­tude to­wards dis­abil­i­ty of the body or mind that would take the strad­dling of dis­ci­plines. It's al­most a sep­a­rate sci­ence re­quir­ing long-term in­vest­ment for in­creas­ing knowl­edge, un­der­stand­ing, and em­pa­thy. It'd in­clude re­form­ing our lan­guage sys­tem for po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness at all lev­els.

At­ti­tude is con­sid­ered as a dom­i­nant, uni­ver­sal hin­drance to so­cial in­clu­sion of those liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties. One em­i­nent sphere of in­flu­ence that begs for im­prove­ment in the lan­guage of men­tal health mat­ters is our main­stream/tra­di­tion­al me­dia. Lo­cal me­dia per­son­nel in some quar­ters–more than we like–are lack­ing in lin­guis­tic com­pe­ten­cy even on fa­mil­iar sub­jects that are eas­i­er to un­der­stand. But for men­tal health is­sues there seems to not even be much con­sid­er­a­tion for cor­rect­ness.

We who ad­vo­cate against the con­tri­bu­tion lan­guage makes to our so­cial ex­clu­sion do not in­tend to make an en­tire pop­u­la­tion awk­ward with the use of cer­tain words in every­day dis­cours­es. In­stead, we hope to teach the mean­ings of these words and what they con­vey in pro­mot­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion against and mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of an en­tire com­mu­ni­ty, un­in­ten­tion­al or oth­er­wise.

I've writ­ten about this be­fore but since last De­cem­ber it's been on prompt with the vi­ral video of po­lice of­fi­cers slap­ping and shov­ing a wheel­chair-en­abled Rob­bie Ram­char­i­tar in San Fer­nan­do. There was at least one news­pa­per striv­ing for cor­rect­ness through­out the is­sue re­fer­ring to Ram­char­i­tar as a "man in a wheel­chair". Not even the in­ter­ven­tion of Dr Bev­er­ly Beck­les, CEO of Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties (NCPD), stymied the of­fend­ing lan­guage that re­mains un­abat­ed to date. I watched for weeks, as Rob­by Ram­char­i­tar apart from be­ing the vic­tim of al­leged po­lice abuse be­came a "vic­tim" of a wheel­chair. Re­port af­ter re­port in­sist­ed that he was "wheel­chair bound".

What's in­creas­ing­ly up­set­ting too, is that politi­cians have height­ened their pres­ence in our head­space and with the cur­ren­cy for far-reach­ing at­ten­tion in an elec­tion year, they are among the most abra­sive to our com­mu­ni­ty in the terms used to in­sult each oth­er. There is ab­solute­ly no com­punc­tion in call­ing every op­pos­ing in­frac­tion "mad­ness" and rel­e­gat­ing any be­hav­iour that could be de­scribed with dozens of suit­able ad­jec­tives to "St Ann's".

Then in a con­tin­ued un­der­es­ti­ma­tion of the in­jury in­flict­ed on those who live with men­tal ill­ness­es from mild to se­vere, the me­dia re­port and high­light the of­fend­ing, vi­cious, and in­sult­ing lan­guage of the politi­cians. Then, the new friend-turned-fiend medi­um called so­cial me­dia is em­bla­zoned with the fol­ly. The cru­el­ty is per­pet­u­at­ed on pop­u­lar time­lines with con­ver­sa­tions sus­tain­ing repet­i­tive as­sault as each com­men­tor tries to out­do oth­ers or show prowess in crass­ness.

I suf­fer. I've stopped read­ing or com­ment­ing on these. That's my protest. My oth­er protest would be against any po­lit­i­cal par­ty whose plat­form/mem­ber triv­i­alis­es men­tal health to in­sult an­oth­er. You, sirs/madams, will not have my vote. I know some peo­ple would al­ways feel en­ti­tled to their use of lan­guage. Some with whom I have tried to rea­son be­cause of per­ceived in­tel­lec­tu­al abil­i­ty have de­fend­ed the dis­parag­ing lan­guage as "Tri­ni talk". Still oth­ers be­lieve that triv­i­al­i­sa­tion of oth­er peo­ple's men­tal health strug­gle is good hu­mour. And some are with­out ill mo­tives, just drown­ing in ig­no­rance.

They are most­ly all con­sid­ered up­stand­ing cit­i­zens who would nev­er break a stop­light. They're ful­ly aware of the con­se­quences of such ac­tions and have been groomed to the com­mon in­ter­est of obey­ing the signs even when no one is look­ing. So en­trenched ig­no­rance about the hurt they cause is bliss, ob­vi­ous­ly. Main­stream me­dia, so­cial me­dia, and cit­i­zens in gen­er­al are all guilty of the neg­a­tive stereo­typ­ing, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the con­tin­ued prej­u­dice and dis­crim­i­na­tion that those of us liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly psy­choso­cial ones, face.

Last week I saw a pic­ture of a politi­cian cap­tioned: "PSY­CHOT­IC...Psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders are se­vere men­tal dis­or­ders that cause ab­nor­mal think­ing and per­cep­tions. Peo­ple with psy­choses lose touch with re­al­i­ty. Two of the main symp­toms are delu­sions and hal­lu­ci­na­tions. Delu­sions are false be­liefs, such as think­ing that some­one is plot­ting against you or that the TV is send­ing you se­cret mes­sages. Hal­lu­ci­na­tions are false per­cep­tions, such as hear­ing, see­ing, or feel­ing some­thing that is not there."

My re­sponse was: "ID­I­OT­IC: 1. char­ac­terised by id­io­cy; 2: show­ing com­plete lack of thought or com­mon sense : fool­ish." I opined, "Un­like psy­choses, still no plau­si­ble or pos­si­ble treat­ment avail­able." I don't reg­u­lar­ly re­act to triv­i­al­i­sa­tion of gen­uine pathol­o­gy, but I'm griev­ed, be­cause I know "lan­guage both re­flects and shapes so­cial re­al­i­ty so our choice of words can re­in­force stereo­types and con­tribute to var­i­ous forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion."

LINKS

http://www.men­tal­health.org.nz/get-help/me­dia/words-mat­ter-a-guide-for-me­dia/

http://depts.wash­ing­ton.edu/mhre­port/docs/Guide­for­Re­port­ing­Men­tal­Health.pdf

�2 Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo is a strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sion­al and me­dia prac­ti­tion­er with over 30 years of pro­fi­cien­cy. She has been liv­ing/thriv­ing with men­tal health is­sues for over 35 years.