![]() ![]() Indeed, many if not most sufferers are plagued by patchy employment records, high divorce rates, substance misuse and an expected lifespan of eight to 12 years lower than the general population. The majority of people with severe bipolar do not lead glamorous, highly creative lives and it’s certainly not a synonym for “interesting”. It’s lifelong, incurable and the best you can hope for is managing your symptoms and keeping the space between episodes as long as possible. Manic depression is not a phase, or an off month or even a susceptibility to mood instability. (Katy Perry, I’m looking at you.)īipolar is an extremely destructive disease and, when people with moody personalities or unruly personal lives claim it as their own, the meaning and pain behind this diagnosis slowly erodes. “Bipolar”, my own diagnosis, is a word that has well and truly entered the general fray.Īs a writer I am no doubt more sensitive to language misuse than most but I feel deeply uncomfortable when the word “bipolar” is used so offhandly, usually to indicate indecision, whimsy or whiplash moods. “The thoughts, feelings and behaviours that appear temporarily as a natural response to hardship and stress – like when we’re heartbroken – exactly mimic those that, should they persist, are defining features of mental disorders.” “Everything we might think of as a ‘symptom’ of mental disorder – worry, low mood, binge-eating, delusions – actually exists on a continuum throughout the population,” she writes. In Losing Our Minds, the UK psychologist Lucy Foulkes writes that mental health awareness among the general population has gone from “famine to feast” within a decade, and she is concerned that the quality of knowledge people are receiving about true mental illness is poor or simply wrong. Other studies from around the globe have found plateaux or increases in stigma against those with severe mental illnesses, especially illnesses with psychotic features. Research published by Cambridge University Press last year found that discrimination and stigma against those living with schizophrenia actually increased over a 30-year-period, with fewer people wanting to live with or have a co-worker with this diagnosis than in 1990. This is palatable to us and our sympathies.īut god forbid if you see or hear or smell or feel things that aren’t there. And using psychiatric terms to describe common human experiences is simply not truthful.Īs a western culture we’ve become more accepting of mood variation, burnout and “a touch of OCD”. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads It’s a climate where sadness can be described as “depression”, stress or nerves as “anxiety” and poor decision-making, overspending or excitement as “mania”. This is concerning as it trivialises the experiences of those battling severe mental disorders and misrepresents how debilitating these illnesses are. I also hear the widespread adoption of psychiatric terminology to describe common adverse human experiences. What I sometimes see now is normal emotional pain and hardship – grief, heartbreak, stress – becoming medicalised. So I find it hard to understand how that level of illness has become entwined with mindfulness, mental-health days and self-care. It’s desperate and it’s sad, and all people want is to get off the ward and live a normal life. The pointy end of mental illness is not photogenic or particularly quotable. If we had, no doubt our anti-psychotics would have been increased or our courtyard privileges quashed. ![]() ![]() We certainly never called our illnesses or symptoms “superpowers”. Using psychiatric terms to describe common human experiences is simply not truthful We were never asked to take part in a mental health awareness campaign, though once, as a special treat, we were taken to an isolated, deserted beach and allowed to run free for half an hour. Nobody I’ve ever been locked up with in a psychiatric hospital felt accepting or “proud” of their illnesses. But in the last decade I have noticed a shift in how openly mental health is discussed how many people are willing to claim psychiatric disorders as their own or armchair-diagnose those around them.īut the sickest people I’ve ever known – myself included – have had almost no part in this opening up, as if we’re suffering from a different condition altogether. ![]()
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