What is the right world for the mentally ill?

There are terms like service avoiders (those who stay away from
services) and survivors (of psychiatric abuse) of which GENUS is but one
organisation which represents the voices of those who others don't..

Perhaps the catch all term is those who incur a mental disability or,
perhaps more correctly, those who have worse outcomes in life because of
their emotions, behaviours, beliefs, choices or experience of
consciousness.

This avoids the problems of precision in language and concepts of terms
like "service user" and "consumer." It avoids the inaccuracies of the
term "mental illness" (after all, homosexuality was not ever an illness).

The focus on the idea of social disability also lays the 'blame' and
what is the true cause of the disability: societies not made right for
human beings and the human condition..

The human race is beautiful in its diversity and complexity but the
post-Industrial age developed world societies are designed to value
this. They value those who feel a little but not a lot. They value those
who work continuously and stably. They value those who contribute to
Gross Domestic Product rather than Gross Domestic Happiness. Those that
are like robots prosper and the rest are disabled by a society which
isn't adapted to our beautiful diversity.

The mental healthcare system's current mode of solving this problem is
to change individuals to make us homogeneous. The method is to make us
all fit in to these false expectations of humans. It doesn't work and
this is one of the reasons behind the evidence that people with a
diagnosis of schizophrenia - one of the severest mental disabilities -
have better clinical and social outcomes in poor developing world
nations compared to the UK or US. (World Health Organisation IPSS on 2,
5 and 10 year follow up).

Changing the focus of the language to enforce the idea of chaning
society rather than changing individuals is the sort of manipulation of
language which leaves a distaste in my mouth. However the idea of the
problem being routed in society rather than the individual and shifting
treatment towards this cause is a laudable motive.

The change in healthcare towards this goal of changing society is best
seen by the Time to Change anti-stigma programme. It is just the
beginning and I hope it is the harbinger of the real change we need to
reduce the suffering and disability.

Changing society is the future of mental healthcare and if words have
power then I think the terms used should describe this future of mental
healthcare.