they considered a perjorative mental health term. Time to Change and
Mind recently complained about The Sun's use of the word "psycho" or
"schizo". The politically correct police love waving their truncheon.
This weekend or the weekend before's episode of Have I Got News for You,
a satirical news quiz program, had Andy Haimilton. I think that's the
guy. He's short and does a lot of comedy stuff on Radio 4. He's a highly
respected entertainer.
In the episode in question he made a joke about insanity. Specifically
it was a joke disparaging voice hearers. He joked about experiencing an
auditory halluncination as a sign of madness and incompetence.
Personally I don't give a shit. A joke's a joke and I doubt he's
actually got any problem with voice hearers. He might be one who doesn't
know he's a voice hearer.
However, voice hearers have suffered the worst discrimination. Of course
most people with schizophrenia diagnoses hear voices. Many others who
wouldn't get a diagnosis of schizophrenia also have a voice in their
head but it's not distressing. Irrespective of the normality of voice
hearing, they've been persecuted across the centuries.
Perhaps no one at Mind, Time to Change or any of the other campaign
groups that consider the use of language to be the most important thing
in the war against rhe prejudice against mental illness watch Have I Got
News for You. Perhaps I've missed the news story where they've lambasted
the program makers for airing the offensive comment - a comment that's
essentially as bad as them airing the panelists saying the word "nigger"
in a derogatory way.
Perhaps they just don't give a shit, or perhaps they're just too busy
doing something useful rather than patrolling the use of pejorative
mental health language.
No comments:
Post a Comment