Category: Stigma

World Mental Health Day 2016 – Real People

On By Cate ReddellIn Mental Health, Stigma2 Comments

world-mental-health-day-10-october-earth-globe-in-hands

World Mental Health Day. That’s today. It’s the day on which we come together, united in a call for better mental health around the world. It’s a day on which I usually know exactly what I want to say. This year has been different.

In the days leading up to today I have thought about writing about the WHO topic chosen of Psychological First Aid. Something that I have thankfully been on the receiving end of in the past. Those in the crisis and caring professions (for me it was the Police) providing psychological care. It helped, enormously.

Then I thought about writing about stigma, this time about sufferers of one mental illness stigmatizing sufferers of other mental illnesses. Yes, it happens and I had been on the receiving end of this just recently. I am, apparently, “a fruit loop”.

Then I was thinking about the people of Haiti. I wondered how their mental health was holding up. The situation in their country leaves me thankful for what I have, but I suspect that their need for psychological first aid doesn’t get a look in, the need for clean water and housing coming up as seemingly more important.

My friend, Motivating Giraffe wrote a wonderful post about the over-abundance of Awareness Days, and how they just don’t matter if we (including people at the top) don’t focus on what ‘really‘ matters. If you read nothing else on this Awareness Day, make sure you read this one (oh, and mine too).

But then heavy on my heart over this past week has been a story in the New Zealand news. It has unfolded as the week went on. It’s one of those stories that in other countries there might not have even been a raised eyebrow, let alone a news headline. But here, these things thankfully don’t happen every day. They can still stop the nation in its’ tracks.

A man with a mental illness went on ‘a rampage’ here. Only three weeks ago he was an inpatient in his local (Waikato) psychiatric hospital, but this week attacked his parents, leaving his mother dead and his father critically ill in hospital. No one knows what motivated this attack, except it must have been somehow driven by his mental illness.

For the next few days, his location was unknown. Police mounted a manhunt with no success. And then at the weekend came the discovery of more dead bodies in an unexpected location. The mentally ill man had killed another elderly couple and then taken his own life. The ‘why’s‘ will perhaps never be known but four people are dead and one still seriously ill in hospital.

What really strikes me is the emergence of this man’s mental illness. He had schizophrenia, and it might be easy to simply conclude “oh, that it explains it“. But that’s not fair. Not all people who suffer from schizophrenia go on to murder. Not all people who suffer from schizophrenia go on to commit crime. And not all people who suffer from schizophrenia go from there to taking their own life. But stigma will have us believing all these things.

This man had no history of mental illness (described in one article I read as a “nice young man”) and then apparently he used illicit drugs once. And ‘once’ was enough to trigger schizophrenia. You see ‘once’ is enough for some people and some mental illnesses. It seems it is a game of Russian Roulette. And that was enough to end four lives and leave hundreds in mourning. Lives changed irreversibly.

My point? That mental illness, and the tragedy that can follow, can happen to anyone. The stigma that too often is applied, is unfounded. It could happen to you too.

This story really hits home to me because I was a ‘nice young wo(man).

I wasn’t mentally ill. I had a good career, a nice home and I had prospects. I was ‘going places“. No one expected my life to change dramatically with the sudden emergence of mental illness. I don’t have schizophrenia, triggered by a casual single use of a drug, but I have another mental illness now. One for which sufferers aren’t often described as ‘nice’.

My friends and family had no reason to expect such a dramatic change to my life. And perhaps more importantly, I had no reason to expect that change.

I could accept a friend’s Bipolar diagnosis. I could even visit her in hospital. I had no difficulty in supporting her, because I believed it could never happen to me.

I could accept that a man known to my family had schizophrenia. But when he began to stalk me, I very clearly saw myself as a victim and him as the perpetrator. I didn’t once stop to think that he was a victim too. And I never once thought it could happen to me.

It did happen to me. I got my own (BPD) diagnosis and spent far too many times in hospital. My days in psychiatric wards and hospitals may not even be over. I don’t know what lies ahead.

If you gain nothing else from World Mental Health Day this year, please  know that it could happen to you. I don’t say that to scare you, rather that you don’t judge those who struggle with mental illness.

Even for the cases, we hear about in the news, those are real people who struggle/d with real illness. Maybe they were on the receiving end of stigma. And maybe they didn’t get the support or treatment they needed. I don’t know why Ross Bremner killed those people or himself this past week. Maybe we will never know. But what we do know is that they were real people, just like you and me.

Thanks for reading

 

Cate

Stigma Via Health Professionals

On By Cate ReddellIn Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Fibromyalgia, Health, Mental Health, StigmaLeave a comment

This is my latest post for A Canvas Of The Minds. It was posted yesterday. I apologise for my lateness in sharing.

“Am I alone with this? Have you been on the receiving end of stigma from health professionals, be it general health or mental health?  How have you handled it and what effect has it had on the overall treatment of your health issue? If it isn’t something you have experienced, how would you handle it if you came across such stigma?”

Read on at: Stigma Via Health Professionals

Thanks for reading

Cate

 

 

I Am Not A Demented Chameleon!

On By Cate ReddellIn Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Mental Health, Stigma10 Comments

Do you remember back in the playground when the overweight kid got called “fatty”?  And the one who told some fibs was branded “liar”?  There were endless names that children named other children without a care in the world.  We (and yes, I probably was one of them too) didn’t know how hurtful those names could be.  Perhaps half the time we didn’t even know what the words meant.  We had simply heard them from others, and thought we’d give them a try ourselves.  I think it’s where the re-phrased “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will always hurt me” fits.  And yes, those names did hurt.

Today, I and all my friends who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) with me, got called names.  We were called  ‘demented chameleons‘.  Apparently Borderlines (like Sociopaths) they said, are ‘demented chameleons‘.  The original name was tossed at sociopaths (as the site was focussed) and my thoughts about that are another issue   I just got angry when I saw someone throw Borderlines into the fire, calling us the same name, with probably no thought at all.

It’s something that I can walk away from.  I’m used to it.  This type of name-calling happens for people with BPD all the time sadly.  Actually it happens to all people with mental illness all the time.  I can walk away and that’s what I did.  The person who labelled me a ‘demented chameleon‘ probably doesn’t personally know anyone with BPD, and simply read it somewhere on one of the awful websites that set out to degrade us.  It is probably a combination of stupidity and ignorance… and so it deserves my walking way.

The difficulty I am left with though, is that ignorant comments like that get read by others, and believed.  It’s what builds up the stigma against both BPD and mental illness as a whole.  That’s what really gets my blood boiling.  How dare they blast me with their stigma but also contribute to the overall stigma that all of us with mental illnesses face.

This is my idea.  For each time I see such a combination of stupidity and ignorance, I need to post here, my opposing view.  Maybe it might not be the same people that read both accounts, but in my world one can still outweigh the other regardless.  If people choose to feed the world with negative views of me, then I can feed the world with the positive.  Does that mean you are going to be reading posts like this everyday?  No, that’s not my intention.  But when my blood boils, I need to speak out.

People with BPD are not ‘demented chameleons“.  If you stop to get to know someone with BPD you will find that actually we are beautiful people.  We are generally very caring people.  That’s part of our disease.  But we are not demented.  While we may change aspects of ourselves in how we come across to the world. we are not cynically one thing one day and another tomorrow.  Moreover that changing does not happen out of an intent to hurt and manipulative.  It is simply who we are as we battle with the internal struggle to own who we are.  It’s not easy having BPD, and name calling such as this doesn’t help us.

I suspect that most people have no idea about BPD.  The label tends to draw a blank expression on the faces of those who hear it.  BPD is  not well known (like say, Bipolar) and is certainly not well understood.  But I will not sit quietly and see myself and my friends named as ‘demented chameleons‘.  That simply comes from ignorance.

And now having said that, I walk away and breathe.  Frankly, the people who choose to live in such ignorance are missing out on you and me.  Emphasis on the missing.  I almost feel sad for them.

Ending on a lighter note… I have been called a ‘demented chameleon‘ but I’m still waiting for the ‘incorrigible’.

Image credit: Used with permission of Sue Fitzmaurice. Facebook: Sue Fitzmaurice, Author
Image credit: Used with permission of Sue Fitzmaurice.
Facebook: Sue Fitzmaurice, Author

PS.  Victory after Publishing.  I’m happy to see that the offending material has now been taken down. 

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” 

― Maya Angelou

Those In Peril On The Sea

On By Cate ReddellIn Family, Health, Mental Health, Stigma6 Comments

Going back a few years, I remember having to sing hymns in high school Assemblies, three times a week.  The hymn that springs to my mind right now is this one (well, this is the first verse):

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

I knew it was a hymn often related to the Navy, and I knew it was old (written in 1861) but I really had little idea of what the words we were singing meant.  Wikipedia tells me it is something related to Psalm 107 about those being shipwrecked and calling for God’s mercy.

My thinking is that those in peril on the sea had no hope, and the issue of being no hope (sometimes) has been weighing heavily on my mind this week.

It was two and a half years ago that a man collapsed in my house and I had to perform Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) on him in an effort to save his life.  I did CPR for 20 minutes.  If you’ve ever had to do it, you will know that it is an extremely physical procedure and in that time I completely exhausted myself.  But I had no thought that there was no hope, and so I kept on.  At one stage I heard a rib crack, and I thought ‘Dad is going to be really sore tomorrow with his cracked ribs I’ve just given him‘.  Still, I believed there must be hope…    and so continued.

Eventually paramedics arrived and took over.  They continued to perform CPR for another 20 minutes before telling me (and my mother who was watching all this) that there was no hope.  He had gone.  My Dad had died.

What was I hoping for?  I guess that the treatment I (and then the paramedics) were giving him, would revive his heart and bring him back to the person I knew. To bring recovery. I wanted him to be saved from his ‘peril on the sea’.

Image credit: John Desjarlais/Wikipedia.com

 

Then I started thinking about hope and how it applies to mental illness.  It’s something I talk about regularly because I believe that having hope is what makes the difference to me getting through my mental illnesses.  For me, there is hope of treatment, both pharmacological and psychotherapeutic.  My main diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a little tricky because as it forms part of who I am (my personality) it can’t just be removed.  For me, management of the symptoms of BPD is what I hope for, and right now I am pretty much achieving.

But is there that hope for all mental illnesses?  Most of us at least have hope of management of symptoms , if not complete recovery but it’s occurred to me recently that actually that hope is not there for all illnesses.  What if there is no medication known to treat the illness, and what if therapy is not known to be particularly effective?  What if most sufferers actually aren’t motivated to seek treatment, even if it was available?  While again, I need to emphasise that I am not qualified in psychology or psychiatry, and so I am speaking of my personal thoughts rather than proven fact, it does seem that there is little hope for those people.  And I’m talking about four in every hundred people.

This fills me with sadness because it is hard enough to live with mental illness when at least someone can see hope.  It also fills me with sadness because people close to me are in that number and I desperately want hope for them.  My heart is also filled with sadness because these people perhaps struggle against the stigma of mental illness the most.  I haven’t named the illness purposely, because as a society there tends to be little, to no compassion for these people.  They’re hardly even treated as people.  But what if it were us?

It’s not my role, or my desire, to be dictating who we should, and shouldn’t feel compassion for but I will tell you my own way of looking at this.  Sometimes even people with mental illnesses (like me) do things that aren’t nice, aren’t acceptable and aren’t what healthy human beings would choose to do.  I don’t like their behaviours one little bit.  I don’t like it when innocent people get hurt.  There needs to be appropriate punishment when crimes are committed.

But that doesn’t take away from the fact that the people with mental illnesses who did these things are human beings.  Look at it another way.  We were all once innocent babies, who needed and deserved the best care in the world.  For a million reasons things can go wrong, but we all still need and deserve care and compassion.  They’re not monsters, but babies.  That’s my way of looking at it anyway.

I don’t write this post today because it’s a good topic to debate, but rather because it is something weighing very heavily on my mind right now… because of my personal experience.  I can’t quite get my head around there being no hope for someone’s mental health, mostly because I had to cling onto my own hope (and others’ hope for me) for so long (and still).  Maybe someone will tell me it doesn’t matter because the person probably isn’t motivated toward treatment anyway, but we all have families.  While they might not always be perfect families, at least some of them would want hope for us.  Some of them would not want us to be at ‘peril on the sea’.  And I just can’t accept that these people should simply be left at peril.

♦

“There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

― John Bradford (1510–1555)

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“It is often in the darkest skies that we see the brightest stars.” 

― Richard Evans

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Celebrity Rating Of Stigma

On By Cate ReddellIn Mental Health, Stigma, Suicide6 Comments

What makes me any different from Stephen Fry?  Or any other celebrity who speaks out about living with mental illness?  So I’m not a celebrity, but after that, we’re all the same.

There has been a lot in various forms of media this week about Stephen Fry coming out about his suicide attempt in 2012. Describing himself as a victim of his moods, he said that he views his role as head of the charity, Mind “is not to be shy and forthcoming about the morbidity and genuine nature of the likelihood of death amongst people certain mood disorders“.

I think it is great when anyone is ‘not shy and forthcoming’ about mental illness and suicide, but a celebrity adds the advantage of perhaps a wider audience than the rest of us. It got me thinking though…

Do we think it’s easier for Stephen Fry, or any other celebrity, to talk openly about their mental illness?  I ask, because sometimes I think that we rely too much on celebrities for this, saying “it’s easier for them”.  Somehow their money, and their status means they apparently have less to lose in being open.  I’m not so sure.

Stephen Fry has friends who might judge him, just like me.  He has family who might criticise him, just like me.  He even has a job he could jeopardize.  I don’t have that right now, but I have in the past.  He also has an audience through his employment.  They could judge him too.

It’s interesting because earlier this week I read an article that suggested that celebrities exposing their mental illnesses actually make the stigma  of mental illness worse.  Apparently celebrities give a warped impression of what mental illness is really like.  They don’t have the same fears as the rest of us about the repercussions of coming out.  Oh, and they’re “less seriously ill” than the rest of us.

It seems to me that celebrities can’t win either way.  If they speak out about their mental illness, they’re somehow judged as not having a clue what ‘real life with mental illness’ is like.  Somehow we think they have it easy.  We can think they have less to lose by coming out.  On the other hand, we rely on them to speak out, even when we’re too afraid to do it ourselves.

I don’t think celebrities have it easy with mental illness.  Anyone with a mental illness will go through hell, regardless of their social status.  Maybe Stephen Fry’s own version of  ‘hell’ is different from mine, but if I choose to judge his ‘hell’ as not being ‘good enough’ then I am no better than the people who judge me… or you.

Personally I believe that the more celebrities who come out about living with mental illness, the better.  But only in that they reach a much greater audience than perhaps you or I might reach.  What is really needed is for people from all walks of life to be speaking out about mental illness.  After all mental illness doesn’t discriminate in who it affects.  It affects  all types of people.

I think the lesson we need to take from Stephen Fry’s decision to share with the media is that we should share too.  No, I’m not saying you or I ring up the local newspaper or television station but simply sharing with one other person, maybe a friend or family member, contributes to destroying the stigma that all of us bear.  It doesn’t have to be a big thing.  Simply telling one person we trust makes a difference.

“But just as we can all agree on what is red, even if we will never know if we each see it in the same way, so we can all agree – can’t we? – that no matter how confident we may appear to others, inside we are all sobbing, scared and uncertain for much of the time. Or perhaps it’s just me.

Oh God, perhaps it really is just me.

Actually it doesn’t really matter, when you come to think of it. If it is just me, then you are reading the story of some weird freak. You are free to treat this book like science fiction, fantasy or exotic travel literature. Are there really men like Stephen Fry on this planet? Goodness, how alien some people are. And if I am not alone, then neither are you, and hand in hand we can marvel together at the strangeness of the human condition.” 

― Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

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Coming Out

On By Cate ReddellIn Mental Health, Stigma39 Comments

If your first thought is that this post is going to be about either my sexuality, or someone elses, you’d be forgiven. Coming out used to be about being presented to society, and more recently it’s been about coming out of the closet. Usually the gay closet. I’m not about to do either of these but coming out is something that I’ve been thinking about in terms of mental illness.

Lately I’ve been reading a number of blogs and articles about the stigma of mental illness, and more specifically the stigma of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). And each time I’ve finished feeling a little frustrated, like we haven’t quite hit the nail on the head yet in addressing this problem.

That’s why I started thinking about the way in which sexuality, and more specifically, different kinds of sexuality have been moving toward a more acceptable space in society. I know that there is a long way to go yet for the LGBT movement, to enable all people to feel able to be who they are without being stigmatized. I look forward to the day when we all accept people for who they are.

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Image credit: Hugh Young

It’s got me thinking. Head back nearly 30 years ago, in New Zealand there was massive reform going on to see homosexuality legalised in 1986. It was a huge reform which saw many protests and arguments. Actually it was much along the lines of the Marriage Equality legislation that is currently being debated in many countries (including New Zealand).

As a young, (I was 21) heterosexual I could have chosen to ignore the 1980’s reform. At the time I was very involved in a Christian church (as I had been all my life) where homosexuality was frowned upon.  Actually ‘frowned’ is not that word.  It was regarded as wrong, and as a sin.

For me though, at the time I was working in an office where my boss was an openly gay man, and a co-worker was openly transsexual. It gave me a completely different view-point than the middle-class, Christian upbringing I had.  At that time, to be open about your sexuality was a big thing.  Not only were my workmates going against the norm, they were also going against the law.

I have to admit that it wasn’t until I knew those people who I realised that actually we are all the same and that no one deserves to be judged by another.  At 21, I came to the conclusion that if they weren’t hurting anyone then why should they not be able to live freely the life they chose?  I accordingly voted for homosexual law reform.

What has this got to do with mental illness?  It strikes me that those of us who have mental illness need to ‘come out’ too.  I know only too well that when we’re dealing with mental illness, we’ve got more than enough to think about let alone taking on activism.  But it seems to me that it is exactly what had to happen (and still happens) for those of a sexuality other than heterosexuality.  They had to come out in order to see change happen in our society.  Maybe it’s not fair, but no one can deny that coming out has helped open society to different realities.

Image credit: GO LIME Awareness for Mental Health (GLAMH)
Image credit: GO LIME Awareness for Mental Health (GLAMH)

Maybe it shouldn’t have been the responsibility of the LGBT movement to change the thinking of society.  In an ideal world, I’d go so far as to suggest as this should have been a responsibility of all human beings.  The thing is though, that the LGBT movement were the one’s who had a vested interest in getting laws and attitudes changed.

In the same way it is those of us with mental illnesses who have the vested interest in seeing the end of the stigma of mental illness.  It seems to me that I will directly benefit if there is more openness and acceptance of mental illness in society.  For my neighbours who don’t have a mental illness the benefit is indirect.

I’d like to think that everyone in society would want this, but the reality is that there isn’t the same obvious benefit for them, as there is for me.  They’re not the one’s who have to think carefully who they admit their mental illness to.  I do though, and in that respect I am little different from my transsexual work-mate of 30 years ago.

I believe we have a choice.  We can sit and wait, hoping that one day society will magically change its attitude to mental illness.  Or we can think about speaking up.  Coming out about our mental illness.  Because the more people who realise that they have a friend, neighbour, family member or work-mate with a mental illness, the more acceptable it will become.

It doesn’t need to be a big deal.  I don’t think we need to list off all our diagnoses.  Actually I believe that would be as off putting as if we listed off everything that was physically wrong.  We just need to let people know that mental illness is exists, and is not the scary thing society has thought it to be. If we can admit to our friends that we have, say diabetes, then why not mental illness?  This is exactly what the LGBT movement has done… shown that different sexualities are actually normal.

I don’t for one moment think that this is an easy ask.  There is a lot at stake.  I’ve simply come to the conclusion that I can’t just sit and wait, hoping that one day things will change.  It’s not going to magically happen.  But if each person takes a small step, as the LGBT people have done over years, and as other minority groups have also done in the past, then we start to make a difference.

♦

“We learned three crucial lessons from LGBT activists: We had to build a movement. We couldn’t be afraid to challenge our friends in power. And we had to give our cause a human face.”

 – Frank Sharry,  America’s Voice

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“We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy … It’s only through people making a stand against that tragedy and being doggedly optimistic that we are going to win through. If you look at the plight of the human race it could well tip you into despair, so you have to be very strong.” 

―    Robert James Brown

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It’s All In Your Head!

On By Cate ReddellIn Fibromyalgia, Graves' Disease, Health, Mental Health, Stigma19 Comments

What are we so afraid of?  Why does being told ‘it’s all in your head’ fill us with terror and completely write off any sense of being validated as a patient in need of help?

My view is that it’s all about the stigma of mental illness.  Somehow we’ve interpreted the message ‘it’s all in your head’ to mean ‘it’s not real’.  And we’ve done that for very good reasons.

I recently read an article about some work being done in understanding Gulf War Syndrome, which has many symptoms similar to fibromyalgia.  They have found that there is clear evidence of brain damage in sufferers, and one of the hopes is that in developing a test (a fMRI) to diagnosis the illness, it will lead onto the more accurate diagnosis of Fibro and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Here’s a quote from that article:

“Many veterans have had difficulties getting benefits and treatment for a service-connected condition because doctors assumed they were either faking it or suffering from post-traumatic stress. “That’s a problem with all physicians — VA, military or civilian,” Baraniuk said. “If it doesn’t fall within their small world of known diseases, then the patient is nuts.”

It’s actually the same with Fibro (and I assume, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), that patients are sometimes thought to be faking their symptoms, or somehow worse still, thought to be psychologically based… and therefore assumed to be somehow not real.

Maybe I have an advantage because I have both mental illnesses and physical illnesses.  I haven’t seen it as an advantage until now but it must be because I know that mental illnesses are real.  That means that I also know that if a doctor sees fit to tell me my physical illness is psychologically based, then I know that their opinion doesn’t remove my symptoms, and therefore my suffering, being real.

My Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is real.  The Anorexia I struggled with for years was real.  The Depression was real.  The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was even real.

They were also ‘all in my head’.  They were all psychologically based, although some of them also affected me physically too.  No one could realistically deny that I was suffering, or that I needed real help to either fight, or manage these conditions.

To add to that, there were very real physical consequences to some of those illnesses.  For example, it is difficult not to accept that Anorexia, as well as being a mental illness, has profound effects on the body which need to be medically treated.  The fact that it is a mental illness does not take away the doctor’s need to treat the patient medically.

If those conditions that I have had or currently still live with, can be identified as psychological but still be treated, then does it really matter whether my fibro is seen as a psychological or a physical illness?  Personally, I don’t think so.  The symptoms are still there, as is my suffering.  Is it ‘all in my head’, or in some other part of my body?  In terms of how it is treated there maybe a considerable difference, but there isn’t a difference in terms of my very real need for help.

My opinion is that the problem with issues addressed by the quote above does not lie with the veterans who are suffering.  The problem is with the medical professional who deem it fit to view that something isn’t real if it is psychological.  Either way the patients with symptoms need help, but it seems too easy for doctors to cast someone aside because their symptoms are from a particular basis.

Even if the doctor wishes to put symptoms down to ‘attention seeking’, my view is that there is still a need for that person to be treated.  Maybe treated differently, but the person still needs help.  Right now it seems that a seeming psychological cause, let alone fake, is simply dismissed often.  That is so wrong.

I actually had a similar issue to this problem a few weeks back with the medical specialist who monitors the auto-immune condition I have called Graves’ Disease.  Graves’ Disease affects a number of parts of the body but primarily the thyroid gland, leading to hyperthyroidism and eventually something called thyrotoxicosis (when levels get toxic and life threatening).

My endocrinologist examined my blood results which indicated that my thyroid levels are currently in a safe range.  The problem for me (and I’d like to think it had been for her too) is that sitting in front of her, I had many of the symptoms of thyrotoxicosis. I can tell you that those symptoms were not pleasant and I was hoping that she would help me to address some of them.  I could accept that the blood tests suggested I wasn’t dying, but I was definitely suffering.

Interestingly she was seemingly interested in helping me to alleviate the symptoms until she went to check my case with her supervisor.  Then she came back and told me that because the blood results were fine, there was nothing that needed to be done.  I was shown the door, and actually later I found she had then formally discharged from the Thyroid specialist service I had been under for several years.

My point is that I was still suffering, but she wasn’t interested.  There’s something wrong when doctors dismiss patients when there is clear evidence of suffering.  Just like the Gulf War veterans.  There is suffering, and whether it is faked, ‘all in the head’, Post-Traumatic stress, or clear sign of physical brain damage (as the fMRI will detect)…  there is a patient who is suffering, who has lost quality of life…  and needs help.

I think it’s sad that the general view is that if something is ‘all in your head’ that somehow the pain and suffering is not real and does not need treatment.  Somehow we need to move away from that view because while it remains, it increases the stigma of mental illness because that too, is seen as not real.  It also increases the likelihood that people won’t seek help when they need it.

But as well as the general population view on this, I am convinced that it is medical professionals that need to lead the way in change.  What they have in front of them is a patient who needs help.  That’s actually what matters.

PS.   There is evidence that the situation with my Graves’ Disease is actually quite common, where the blood results indicate everything is ‘normal’ but the patient reports a very different reality in terms of symptoms.  I’m not aware of a substantiated reason for this though.  Unfortunately many health professionals choose to deny the existence of such an anomaly and so patients end up going without the help they may need.

♦

“Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.” 

―    Norman Cousins,    Anatomy Of An Illness

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“A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.”

Auden, W. H.

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Still Standing Up To Stigma

On By Cate ReddellIn Mental Health, Stigma11 Comments

Stand up for Mental Health

In doing my research, then writing and keeping up with feedback later, for my post The Black Mark Against Mental Illness I was reminded of just how strong the stigma against mental illness is.  People feel very strongly about being labelled as having a mental illness, and I don’t think that’s so much about the label (or the treatment that might be needed), as the attitude they expect from the general public, as well as the attitude they apply to themselves about having a mental illness.

That post made me realise anew just how hard it is to accept a diagnosis of mental illness, and had me thinking that we have to do something about this because it’s stopping people from getting the help and treatment they need.

So it was timely when I discovered Healthy Place’s Stand Up For Mental Health Campaign, which starts today.  This campaign in about standing up to, and eliminating the stigma against mental illness.  By taking part in this, I am saying:

There is nothing “wrong” with having a mental illness.

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People with a mental illness are not alone in what they are dealing with.

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People with a mental illness shouldn’t feel ashamed or forced to hide their mental illness symptoms and desire for effective treatment.

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Mental health stigma will no longer be tolerated.

One thing I have been reminded of recently is being told their illness or symptoms are ‘all in their head’ is scary for people.  I’ve particularly noticed this amongst fibromyalgia sufferers who, like me, often have a hard job getting doctors  to take their suffering seriously.  When any suffering impedes our daily life, it is serious and I think it is so sad that this is a common attitude struck by people with chronic pain conditions.

As quite rightly pointed out to me the other day it IS ‘all in their head’.  After all, whether it is fibromyalgia, which has it’s grounding in neurological functioning, or a specific mental illness, it does come from the brain… which is found in the head.  Why should something based in the head be something to be feared or ignored?  It shouldn’t be.  It is just as important as if I have a twisted ankle which affects my walking.

When people are suffering, they shouldn’t need to fear the reactions of either medical staff, media, or their friends and family.  Whatever the basis of suffering is, it is real and should be treated as such.

Yet again, I go on about stigma and now I have joined this Campaign.  I think that’s what it’s going to take.  For us to continually chip away against the attitudes that exist.  Every time we contribute to the conversation against stigma, then we are creating an ocean full of acceptance and understanding for everyone who suffers.  Even if we can’t change the attitudes we personally experience, it would be great if we made it easier for those ahead to seek and get the help they need.

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“How would your life be different if…you stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day…you look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.”

~Steve Maraboli, Life, The Truth and Being Free

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The Black Mark Against Mental Illness

On By Cate ReddellIn Fibromyalgia, Health, Mental Health, Stigma19 Comments
‘DSM-IV’ Image credit: Wikipedia.com

There’s been quite a bit of conversation going on in different places about the upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 (DSM-5), which will finally make itself useful in May 2013.  There’s a lot of controversy over various elements of it and I could take up many posts just discussing those. I must remember to get back to the intended change of name for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

For today though I want to talk about the issue of the stigma against mental illness and how it is making itself seen, and heard in the fibromyalgia world.  At the outset it’s important to point out that fibro is NOT a mental illness, nor is it categorised as one.  But there is a new disorder mentioned in the DSM-5 that has a lot of people with fibro worried.

Under the DSM-5 there is a new diagnostic category called Somatic Symptom Disorder (SSD) which will apparently mislabel some people with medical disorders as have a mental disorder.

A person will meet the criteria for SSD by reporting just one bodily symptom that is distressing and/or disruptive to daily life and having just one of the following three reactions to it that persist for at least six months:

1) ‘disproportionate’ thoughts about the seriousness of their symptom(s); or

2) a high level of anxiety about their health; or,

3) devoting excessive time and energy to symptoms or health concerns   (1.)

The concern of fibro patients I have been reading of in recent days is that their fibro will be re-labelled as SSD if they have this high level of anxiety and thought to their fibro symptoms.  As a fellow sufferer of fibro I know all too well that it is very hard not to be anxious about symptoms.  They are literally new every morning, and there is a constant worry over how to treat, and manage the symptoms as well as getting through daily life.  So I get their concern that they might be labeled with SSD.

Do I want yet another label?  Not particularly, but I fail to see the whole issue with quite the level of dismay I have read recently.  I will still be a fibro sufferer, and therefore a medical patient.  SSD does not take away my fibro.  Regrettably what it does is give me, and no doubt millions of others, an extra label.

I know for many fibro patients, they fight hard against suggestions that fibro is ‘all in their head’ and has a psychological component.  For me though, I am quite happy to accept that there is a psychological element in my fibro, and actually one of the most helpful treatments I have is access to my psychotherapist.

That doesn’t mean my pain and fatigue isn’t real.  I can assure you it is.  But I recognise that my emotional well-being plays a part in how much pain I am in.  Most people though, don’t want to think this way and I suspect that stigma and the general public’s view of mental illness is the reason for this.

What  concerns me is the fear that I have seen fibro patients display as they write about being labelled as having a mental illness.

“WTH! I’m not mental!”

“This is such BS!! I know my pain is real and not in my head and has it made me crazy? Yes!! But I wasn’t before fibro moved in!!”

“this made me want to cry… people already do not believe me so I push myself everyday to prove some one hurting so much everyday can be strong…. so they call us crazy when we just want to know whats wrong with us, be normal, and happy…”

“My doctor told me all fibro patients just need a good psychiatrist !”

“the pain is more than real…its not in our heads!!!”

“I have nightmares about people close to me not believing what I go through with FM and belittling the severity of it. I wake up crying and feel awful for hours afterwards.”

“Please don’t make it harder for all of us than it already is. We are in enough pain as it is.”

“This is not a made up illness. It is real. People are suffering immensely.”

“The pain is REAL.  I have it right this minute in my whole body and it is excrutiating (sic), is that all in my head.”

If you are led to believe that your medical illness will disappear, and be replaced by a mental illness that takes no account of the level of pain and suffering you experience on a daily basis, then I can understand people being concerned.  But I don’t think that is exactly what is happening.

What does concern me is that when I read the comments above, I see how fearful people are of being labelled with a mental illness.  From this range of comments is suggests that people see mental illnesses as made up, not real, all in our head and of no significance.

And while I know first-hand that the pain of fibro is very real I know that the pain of mental illness is just as real, if taking a slightly different form.

All I can take from this is that while fibro sufferers have a shared fear of not being taken seriously, more worrying to me is the sheer size of stigma which makes people fearful of having a mental illness.  If everyone shares this fear, then they are likely to not seek treatment if they think they have any sort of mental illness.

Actually mental illness is real, but it is also survivable.  If the SDD diagnosis can be used carefully and appropriately then maybe people with overwhelming and disabling worries about their illness, whatever it is, can be helped.  That doesn’t need to stop people with fibro getting the treatment we need.

I am inclined to think there is a little scare mongering going on.  A little information is blown out of proportion.  And then the masses get scared.  Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.  But then I’m so used to mental illness, another label really won’t worry me.  I’ve got plenty already.  It does seem though, that stigma is alive and kicking and it’s not at all helped by scare tactics.

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