Extension of compassion to addicts

Depressed people get compassion. They're not told to get on with it. Their suffering is understood and understanding is offered.

Not for addicts and drug users. Generally they're allowed to be treated with disrespect, stigmatised and never given an inch of compassion.

There have been few attempts to shift this mode of thinking. Mind's men and mental health policy report made a small reference to the suffering addicts are self-medicating. It is a rare example.

The mental health movement treat addicts differently. They rarely stand up for them or even stand by them. There are millions of addicts and drug users in the UK but there's no antistigma movement for them.

The mental health movement has often suppressed the potential of illegal drugs. Noteably the Harvard Psychobicilin Project at its spiritual faculty was shut down by the mental health faculty.

But they, like the rest of the mentally ill based on the current definition, deserve compassion. They suffer the same exclusions, clinical outcomes and social disability which define the prognosis of mental illness. I would guess that addiction has neurobiological differences which could fit the biomedical model.

I also know the suffering from the inside. I know the crazy and what happens to the crazy. I know how drug users and addicts are vilified. I know how no one campaigns for us.

Could compassion really be extended to this group which are often pariahs even in the mental health community?