I've avoided entering into a significant debate on language and mental health because I feel there are more important things, primarily an understanding of the underlying concepts. I've barely touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the concepts.
So much work goes into considering what is the appropriate language to decribe mental health and people. People and organisations work to make people use a certain term or not, for example "schizo" or "psycho" are not terms approved by the mental health political correctness movement.
Perhaps I'm old fashioned in finding the concept is the most important thing. Perhaps it comes from valuing what science can offer with a good foundation. This foundation isn't present in mental health.
Regardless of the motivations behind my attitude it is something which has gotten me into trouble. The best example is a disciplinary from the Chief Executive of one of the UK's top mental health charities for a letter I wrote. I once worked at Mind and was asked to write a letter for their Openmind magazine.
It started with "don't get me started on the language in mental health or I used words you couldn't fucking print" or something along those lines then I went on a short but pointed tirade about the use of language. It might have been this sentence or it might have been the one which said, "I work for an organisation where I'm expecting a memo to come round saying bananas should be referred to as fruits with mental health problems."
Politically correct charities do not find this sort of thing amusing. I and the editor of the magazine clearly thought differently. In the end I had to take a disciplinary on myself to get out of the Openmind magazine disciplinary. It worked too but that's a story for the pub.
It frustrates me that people languish over the words when they don't examine the concepts. It gets me into trouble and that's why rather than start this book with a note on terminology I started delving straight into the nitty gritty. What are the concepts we're talking about?
This is not to say I'm dismissive of the effect certain words can have. I know their are different shades of meaning hidden in cultural understandings.
In the UK mental health also used to be know as mental hygiene in the early 20th century. A century later it seems a new word has cropped up without anyone considering what it means with respect to the old ones: well being. It seems positive mental health was too many words and, of course, there is a negative quality associated with the word mental health - perhaps because of mental illness - and well being was about all population mental health. It's easier to sell to politicians if a new word is used.
Then there's mental health problems or conditions or experiences or disabilities. They're all politically correct alternatives to the world mental illness and, of course, the psychiatric term emotional and behavioural disorders. Madness, lunacy and being mental are generally disapproved of too but the first two are commonly used terms in times gone by and a small minority of people, of whom I am one, are mad pride.
The idea of mad pride is a fascinating one when considering the arena of language and mental health. It is the antitheisis to what the politically correct mental health movement. Mad is not a PC word.
Those sensitive to language may be distressed by the use of the word. They may prefer a nicer term which means the same thing, like severe mental health problem. This is a rosy word for people who associate madness or mental illness with bad things. These people are trapped in stigma. The stigma causes the distress and the motivation to change the word. I experienced this stigma but my path was different. I sought to understand the concept, both the positive and the negative on whatever continuum, and the words only denote the concept. The words may have perjorative undertones but mad pride reclaims the words and sees positives which others don't see.
Just like gay pride. The now demedicalised mental illness offers insight into the issue. Some people are still homophobic and use words like fag or queer without understanding the concept. Some use the term because they're either proud of or unafraid to be queer or a fag. Or mad or crazy.
It is far more complicated than I'm explaining here. There is an ultimate stigma to all mental illness. It is the stigma which creates the pathologisation as well as the stigma which creates the need to be sensitive about language. If we were talking about protons and neutrons then there's no need to call a proton something which has a positive charge problem or a neutron a particle with charge disadvantage.
Mental health is about people and mental illness...well actually it means a lot of things. One is simple. It means the mental healthcare system wants to change you to what it sees as normal or healthy. This implies a value judgement and it also puts a person in the same category as 'bad' people who are also mentally ill.
This is a hard concept for me because my degree is Electronic Engineering, not psychology or anything like that. Protons don't care what they're called and there's nothing wrong with being a proton. Protons and electrons are different but seen as essential parts of the make up of the universe. Sure, the movement of the nucleus causes electron flow to slow but it's something electronic engineers live with and find ways to overcome or use this problem as a property.
I suppose it is just wishful thinking but I would like to see the engineers' mentality in mental health. The concepts are far more important but people don't understand them so they resort to messing about with words.
The concepts are judged as good and bad but this is not an objective truth or absolute. The concepts are not well defined enough for them to be made truly objective and scientific. Instead people fuck about with language rather than the fucking concepts and trying to understand them.
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