Margot Kidder is a miracle. The actress, who is well known for playing Lois Lane in the Superman movies, battled bipolar disorder for years before having a severe manic episode in 1996. She has not had any mental relapses since that time, nor has she been on any psychiatric medication. This is not to say that her recovery from mental illness was due to divine help, or that she's somehow better than other people. It is just truly remarkable that Kidder came from a place of complete insanity to being lucid, rational and engaging. This did not happen by accident. When Kidder spoke at SUNY Rockland Community College earlier this month, she repeatedly stressed how important it is to treat those who are mentally ill as human beings. "The thing that saved my life 10 years ago was respect and compassion," she said during her lecture. She didn't get it from doctors, either. It came from a homeless man named Charlie. "He gave me the respect of one human being to another," she said. "All he did was simply take care of me." While the synthetic knowledge of medication has made great strides in combating mental illness, Kidder still claimed that her recovery has been due to being treated like a human being. Unfortunately, this is the exception, not the rule. To this day, a stigma about mental illness causes people to look at the mentally ill as anything but human beings. Kidder understands that to combat the stigma she must talk openly about her experiences as someone who is mentally ill, and show people that not only that a full recovery is possible, but that the stigma doesn't exist if you don't let it. She also understands that courage is contagious. I am simply following her lead. I am mentally ill. I also live in the mental health system. In a way I feel as if I'm admitting that I'm a convicted felon, or that, fundamentally, I'm unlike the rest of you. It feels as if I'm admitting that I'm feeble minded, cowardly, lazy, morally bankrupt, prone to violence and/or just completely insane. I've hidden this during my time at RCC because I knew that it would negatively affect the way people look at me. The people I work with at this newspaper are finding out about this only because of this article. Until this time I just flat out refused to talk about where I lived or what brought me to RCC. The fact is, my mental illness makes me no worse than anyone else, and I have nothing to be ashamed of. The stigma against people with mental illness goes further than shame. It violates our dignity.
It's all around you
Before anything else, I'll clarify what I mean by the word 'stigma.' It's the type of psychiatric language that emerges from bureaucracies. Essentially, a stigma is a mark of infamy, shame and reproach. It separates a person from others by branding them as something less than a person. Archaically, it referred to when people would literally brand the skin of slaves or criminals. Today's meaning is figurative, but of no less substance. The impression that I get from talking to people is that with regards to the mentally ill, they feel something is wrong. Not just chemically, mind you, but wrong in a moral sense. They aren't like us. They're strange. They're a threat to our safety. This attitude of 'us' and 'them' is at the root of the stigma against the mentally ill because it reverses the most fundamental point about mental illness: they are us. The Mental Health Association defines mental illness as "a disease that causes mild to severe disturbances in thinking, perception and behavior." It's immediately obvious that if the term is applied loosely, it can relate to almost anyone. Moreover, mental illness does not discriminate along racial, age, class or gender lines. In fact, all the evidence clearly shows that, far from being a scattered phenomenon that affects only a few deranged individuals, it is nothing short of an epidemic. According to the MHA, mental illness is the most prevalent health problem in America, outnumbering cancer, lung disease and heart disease combined. They claim that during the course of a year, more than 54 million Americans are affected by one or more mental disorders, and that those disorders account for four of the ten leading causes of disability in the United States. A survey released by the American Psychiatric Association claimed that each year, one in five adults is diagnosed with a mental illness. One in five. Think about that in terms of your family. A few of my close relatives have bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Until very recently, their behavior had always mystified me. If you want proof of a stigma, consider that the APA also found that an equal percentage of people would not see a psychiatrist under any circumstances. A different survey released by the APA found that 31 percent of adults said they wouldn't seek treatment for mental illness for fear of what other people would think. If you want more proof of a stigma, consider that one-third of the respondents in that survey thought that emotional or personal weakness caused mental illnesses. They are, of course, mistaken. Mental illness is caused by genetic and environmental factors, traumatic events, and other physical illnesses and injuries that have psychiatric side effects, according to the APA. It has nothing to do with character. So, as Kidder said, mental illness has nothing to do with "a lack of moral courage." It has nothing to do with being weak. And while the character of an individual has nothing to do with the fact that they develop mental illness, it does take courage and strength to get help. Adults are not the only ones affected. In a news release from September 2005, the APA stated that nearly half of all college students reported feeling so depressed that they had trouble functioning, and 15 percent met the criteria for clinical depression. At the same time, the APA reported that over 10 million prescriptions for anti-depressants are written each year with no mental health follow up afterwards. While this might not seem like a big deal, consider this: the economic burden of depression alone in the U.S. in 2000 was an estimated $83 billion.
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