The need for Mental health de-stigmatization
And the importance of advocacy work
Since it is May, and because I wanted to do some mental health advocacy work, I recently posted a short video and post that requested people adjust their language when discussing “those type” of people who complete suicide.
One of them was on my mental health advocate instagram post.
I wanted to give you a comment that was said in response, not to give their words merit, but to address the type of resistance that we meet when we try to advocate for the seriousness and legitimacy of mental health conditions and mental illnesses.
This is why this month is important and so much work is still needed.
The comment:
“Suicide is not a disease, it is a choice. It may be because of mental illness or other diseases, but labeling it as a disease suggests that the person had no choice in the matter and that is never true. I have family members that have died because of drug addiction and overdose, and that too is a choice similar to suicide. I can see the part that the addiction played but it wasn’t an inevitability, they made those decisions. I don’t think we should be policing other peoples grief by telling them how to speak or what to think or how to feel. “Commuting” is a perfectly acceptable way to name the act that takes a loved one away from us and for those of us that have a hope in Jesus, calling it judgy Christian language is offensive and I think you ment it to be. My heart goes out to anyone who has lost someone they loved and we should all support each other and not try and become victims because of it ourselves.”
I’m going to give you a rhetorical break down of the faulty logic behind what this person is saying:
This represents a very black/white thinking - a false binary - the idea that simply because something can be labelled as a disease, means that we are saying that people have ‘no choice’. It’s very all-or-nothing- mindset.
We tend to this when we discuss mental health, forgetting that the brain is an organ that functions (or fails to function) to chemicals within it. Those with major depressive disorder - leading the suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts and likeliness to complete - have brains that function differently. They even look differently on a brain scan.
Neuroscientists know now and have supported studies that confirm that often times individuals are missing important chemicals within their brain, or they don’t have the neuro-transmitter functions to ‘uptake’ or absorb them.
One example of GABA -
You can take a look here:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-origins-of-suicidal-brains/
But it states that:
“In October researchers in Canada found that the depressed who commit suicide have an abnormal distribution of receptors for the chemical GABA, one of the most abundant neurotransmitters in the brain. GABA’s role is to inhibit neuron activity. “If you think about the gas pedal and brakes on a car, GABA is the brakes,” explains co-author Michael Poulter, a neuroscientist at the Robarts Research Institute at the University of Western Ontario.”
Now, mind you, this was published in 2009, and so I’m sure we know much more.
It is but one small example of what you can do with a quick google search and if you’re willing to educate yourself, be open-minded enough to understand that for people with mental illnesses, yes, they have free will and choice -
But they also may not be - quite literally- firing at full capacity because of a lack of certain hormones, a lack of neurotransmitters, etc.
It’s nuanced.
Addiction is also recognized as a disease, supported by mental health experts and doctors. Putting them into the same basket, or two sides of the same coin, is pretty reductive and shows that this commenter has need to stigmatize any mental health condition that they do not understand, chalking it all up to simply a matter of choice.
The implication here is this -
I see it as a choice. I don’t have this problem. But I am going to apply my own lack of hardship with this issue onto everyone else, likening my body and mind to everyone else.
The final thing that I think is interesting is this -
There’s an implication that because I critique language and approach to condemning rhetoric surrounding mental illness and suicide, used and upheld by the church, that this means that I am not a believer.
That is a judgment and is far from the truth.
I do believe in God. I believe in Jesus. I don’t think God wants us to complete suicide. But I also think God understands their pain, the nuances of it as a disease, the balance between free will and disease. Better then any of us.
Even though God instructs believers/Christians not to judge, they/we tend to be some of the biggest judgers of others.
And it’s really sad.
Because they feel emboldened.
I believe in God, and God is on my side, so I can judge.
The use of the word ‘committed’ surrounding suicide is a human-made practice. Not a mandate from God. These are rules and languages that churches created in their limited understanding of mental illness from a very long time ago.
We know better know. We ought to do better.
Willful resistance to this is not empathy or compassionate.
I understand that it strikes a nerve and rattles peoples’ egos, to be told that they make be judgy - but we can be teachable, empathetic and compassionate. We are not always right, and there’s nothing wrong with admitting that we know little about mental illness, either from our own experience or from the science-aspect of it.
The other thing I think is interesting is that this person—whether or not they realize it —positions themselves as the one with the loss, the victim - we lost someone and so we can say committed. Or, apparently, commuted.
How ironic is that - Freudian slip - since they commute the focus away from the one who lost their life, blame them, and then say that we are the ones who lost someone.
I don’t know about this person - but I do feel defensive of those who have diseases that lead to suicide, I feel defensive of my father and brother -
I recognize that they were mentally ill. Not in their right minds.
We don’t know what lays beyond - to take that risk - to cease our existence without fear or stopping to reconsider implies a pain that I think most of us can scarcely imagine.
The moments in my life where I had suicidal ideation, I recognize now, looking back, that I was not in my right mind. I am thankful that I still had choice to not complete suicide. But I also read an article that said that the difference between those who think it and those who do it —again — has to do with brain function and executive function.
My brother and father, they had a disease. My father was mixing prescription drugs and alcohol.
I believe my brother was bipolar/manic and aggrieved, and had a lot of mental health conditions that were undiagnosed and untreated. That’s all that I know of, there may have been alcohol abuse as well.
Though I hurt and have had loss - I also believe that they too suffered - to be in the place, diseased, where they saw that death at their own hands was the only option.
This person’s ego takes over in the request to adapt their language, to even consider another way of viewing mental illness.
Be teachable. You are not always right.
This includes me.
There is much we all still don’t understand about the brain/neuroscience.
I struggle to understand conditions like schizophrenia, voices, hallucinations, psychosis.
I am so thankful not to have those conditions.
But I realize I can’t grasp them because I’ve never wrestled with them.
We cannot escape our minds. They rule our thoughts, behaviors, actions.
And when our minds are not working on our sides, it’s a unique type of Hell on Earth.
Those with depression, those with severe anxiety, schizophrenia, OCD, among other conditions, etc - they get that.
Be kind. Consider the ways that we still stigmatize mental health crises and illnesses.
Perhaps re-consider how you think of them as different than physical conditions. And at odds with other ‘diseases’ or that they are only a matter of ‘choice’.
We can do better.
And truly, we have to.
With numbers of mental health conditions sky-rocketting, limited providers, expensive costs of mental health care, and so many cuts to funding —
Our role in the fight to raise awareness and de-stigmatize is more important than ever.
Well said 💪