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Monday, November 01, 2010
Education About Mental Illness Good Beginning
By Ellen Coplen
Clinical Director, Pathways Inc.
Regarding Winthrop Quigley's recent UpFront column on mental illness, thank you for shedding light on the stigma that many people with mental illness face and how people who are uninformed often prefer to run away rather than interact with them.
The more people can be educated, the more opportunity there is for those who have the illness to be accepted as human beings, not just as "schizophrenics" or people who have "lost their mind."
As a clinician who provides services for adults in Bernalillo County who have severe and debilitating mental illnesses, I have learned some things that matter to these individuals, such as:
Referring to someone with a mental illness as their mental illness (i.e., "addict" versus a person with an addiction, "schizophrenic" versus a person with schizophrenia, "bipolar" versus a person with bipolar disorder) is degrading, just as it is for someone who has a disability being labeled as "disabled."
It is also degrading to refer to someone who becomes symptomatic as "losing their mind." They do still have their minds, but their minds are probably working differently than yours or mine.
People with severe mental illness can become an integral part of their — and our — communities with the appropriate level of services, such as caring, supportive and respectful agencies that coach and mentor them on how to be productive and happy citizens.
Unfortunately, part of the stigma for many, particularly people with schizophrenia, is that they must be medicated in order to be "stable." What often happens is that they spend years on some forms of medication that actually diminish much of their capability to actually participate in their own lives.
Medication alone is not the answer. Nor is locking people away from the rest of the human race so we don't have to run away from them.
I am pleased the University of New Mexico is offering lectures on the topic, but educating the public needs to be backed up by dollars to help provide direct services to individuals who need it. I hope some of that money (an anonymous $1.5 million donation) goes beyond education and research to where it counts the most.
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