Why words really do matter in mental health

“Political correctness gone mad” is the challenge from some quarters who resent another intrusion from the liberal thought police into the world of everyday speech.  So why do we get so excited and why does language really matter in the world of mental health?

Some of the public language about mental illness reflects deep seated ignorance which trivialises the experience of people with mental health problems. 

Take the colloquial use of the term ‘schizophrenic’ to mean ‘in two minds’, apparently first used by no lesser a literary figure then TS Elliot.  Harmless enough one might argue but also totally at odds with the reality of living with that diagnosis.  Profound distress, loneliness and isolation, poor physical health, the blighting of opportunities and a greatly raised risk of suicide hardly feels synonymous with a mild state of indecision.

Or take Geoff Boycott’s remarks earlier in the year when cricketer Michael Yardy had to return from the World Cup when he was suffering from depression.  Boycott’s thoughtless comment suggested that this was nothing more than a reaction to some of the criticism of his bowling.  As anybody who has had it will tell you depression is a little bit more than feeling a bit stressed or dispirited.  It’s a condition that affects significant number of people and yet a public figure like Boycott can belittle the condition in this way something he would never accept about the finer points of leg spin bowling.

On other occasions thoughtless language hurts because of the deep disrespect it demonstrates towards the suffering of people affected by mental illness and that of their families.  Jeremy Clarkson is a man who likes to live on the edge but his recent graphic comments about suicide show, even by his standards, an amazing insensitivity to the position of people who have been in the desperate position where they act to take their own lives or to the deep grief and trauma  experienced by their families. If the same remarks had been made about people dying of cancer the outrage would have been enormous.

Finally,  thoughtless language hurts because it is a sign of exclusion.  Words like “nutters” and “loonies” imply a sense that people with mental illness are somehow different from the rest of humankind, to be a subject at the best of sympathy, at the worst of fear or ridicule. 

Even without the use of disparaging language exclusion and social isolation remain some of the most painful symptoms of a mental illness. 

So the debate about language is central to the battle to challenge negative attitudes toward mental illness and to bring an issue which might affect one in every four of us to be an everyday topic of conversation.  What we recognise, not as something outside us, but as something which might affect us and our families is something we are prepared to do something about.

Informed, respectful and inclusive language is all we are looking for and until we have it from those figures who help set the terms of public debate I will keep on writing those letters.