Mental Health Awareness Week: STIGMA

STIGMA OF PATIENTS DISABLED WITH MENTAL ILLNESS

This week is Mental Illness Awareness Week sponsored by NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. (http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=fight_stigma) This weeks stigma story comes from New Monic Books, an educational publishing company, otherwise helpful for SAT preparation for people with learning disabilities as giving a sample sentence provided for the word “asinine.”
New Monic Books is an educational publishing company. Its paperback Vocabulary Cartoons II (2007 edition) is helpful for SAT preparation, as well as people with learning disabilities. However, one StigmaBuster reports that on page 41, the sample sentence provided for the word "asinine" "My sister gave up working in a mental hospital because she could no longer deal with ASININE behavior” Asinine, extremely foolish, does not apply to people who are ill. It is hopeful that readers will watch their language!
Asinine means "extremely foolish." It's not an appropriate word to apply to people who are ill. We don't believe the company intended to offend, but please politely let them know the impact the sample sentence may have in shaping attitudes of students and reinforcing stigma. Send a note to info@vocabularycartoons.com suggesting the following points.
Please remove the sample sentence in the book
You probably didn't mean to offend, but please don't trivialize any medical illness.
Please don't stereotype. Don't mock the behavior of people who are sick through no fault of their own.
Now please let me tell you of my experience with stigma related to patients with mental disorders. My father spent 16 years at MacaNell Nursing Home in Clay County, Indiana. It is now closing as a nursing facility and privately owned. It is a century or so old three story brick with basement building built as a county home. The basement is made up of several brick jail cells with iron gates. In the early 1900s patients were housed there that could not be otherwise controlled. Now the new owners make money for a charity, the end justifies the means, by making the building a haunted house, including “patients acting out”, all for the sake of a dollar and entertainment.
Here’s my story of my attendance there during Halloween At McCann Manor, http://nightatthemanor.com/manor/?page_id=17.
On October 30, 2007 I heard a segment on the local TV advertising a haunted house event. It caught my attention because the location would be at the former nursing home where my father Pete lived for about 16 years following his stay at the Evansville State Hospital.
\My interest was piqued further as they showed cells in which mental patients had been confined for a number of years previous to my father's staying there in this former county home. I had been on each of the three floors of the institution but was not aware of these cells in the basement nor their history. Cells were shown on TV with someone acting obviously mentally disturbed. Since haunted houses often include such displays of the mentally ill, I was on my way in a matter of minutes to travel about 35 miles to the location.
At the entrance to the event, I paid my $8 for admission for what was to be, I was told, about a twenty minute tour of the facilities. As I walked across the yard where my father had often strolled, I naturally thought of him. A few people were waiting their turn to enter at the old main entrance of which I was familiar.
\A young mother said she was back for a second night to bring another youth. I asked what special interest brought her back. She commented that it was educational. Just maybe it could be on educational tours sponsored by mental health organization.. I pursued the question further and she soon withdrew that description when I commented that portraying mentally ill people for entertainment purposes was hardly educational. Actually, it was educational to me in another way since I soon encountered once again the public's attitudes toward mentally ill persons.
Sure enough the cells were occupied by "mental patients" who variously portrayed the actions of patients whom I had seen at Central State Hospital and at Evansville State Hospital in Indiana. Two of those were asked b y me if they were mentally ill or knew of someone who was. Another was asked why he wore chains, or another why he was flashing a butcher knife. These people unwittingly promulgating stigma were four of a dozen or so with whom I spoke.
One young lad about 14 years old, not in costume late in the tour, took me by the arm late in the tour and kindly asked if I was OK. "Oh, yes, thank you, why do you ask?" I responded. He said he was told I was “disturbed” and just wanted to make sure I was alright. Briefly, I explained why that appeared to be and culminating the brief conversation, I told him I hoped he understood and would not participate next year. Similarly, I suggested to another young man who led me out a different door so I would not be going down the fire escape chute that he also would give a second thought about such activity. Mobility problems prevented me from sliding down the chute.
Another highly advertised haunted house in our locale was presented as a shadow aslyum. Without forethought participants in such events are unaware of the statistic that one in five will be needing mental treatment in their lifetime. Mental patients need respect and our caring support rather than be used for entertainment, or even to raise money for otherwise good causes.
Except for my dad, Pete, I might be one of them who do not understand. Chapter Five, Woodmere to Woodlawn, in FOR PETE'S SAKE, critiques the medical treatment my father experienced at this nursing home and two other locations.
Another link: http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=fight_stigma
One can go to a mental health meeting like the annual meeting coming up here next week, and yet fail to at least smile at a patient in the store, or tell jokes about ole Joe down the street who is mentally ill.
Thank you on behalf of my father’s memory and the welfare of patients today who need caring support as well as lawful protection and pharmaceutical or psychiatric assistance.