To What Extreme Will This Persist? How Much Discrimination Will They Need To Face?

In each of our lives we often long to survive in more convenient ways with ease and without much conflict. While many may have the misconception this is not true of the mentally ill, the fact is there attempts at survival are made increasingly difficult by several things but here I’ll try and go into the difficulty they face of sanist discrimination. This discrimination is so pervasive that a person subject to it often cannot imagine much if any escape, even for a brief moment. Oftentimes these individuals are subjected by those that are meant to be most supportive, for example teachers, coaches, public servants, legal help, even friends and family to name a few.

This is most certainly eye opening to those that wish to actually attempt to perceive the difficulty these individuals face. Some have argued that this may be the most pervasive form of discrimination in recorded history. In recent history the mentally ill were sent to the gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and were given forced lobotomies in this very country in the not so distant past. Some might say well this has all changed, but that is certainly an assumption made at face value because many of the same attitudes still exist and are evident in the every day lives many if not all the so often oppressed and excluded mentally ill.

For instance prior to many of the genocides in recent history there have been extensive propaganda campaigns, so why do so few question the almost constant defamation of the mentally ill by mainstream news and much of entertainment? Everyday there seems to be another mention of how the “insane” are violent and criminalistic which research has proven to be false for quite some time. The prejudice many possess makes the fact that research contradicts the “mad’s” portrayal in entertainment and news in itself not even worthy enough for filler type nonsense news story, which itself might indicate those outlets may be worthy of being discredited and ultimately shamed as well. Perhaps someday but not just yet, but to what extreme will this persist?

If it’s not the news talking about someone with mental illness in a negative light, then it’s the neighbors, one’s religious group, their schoolmates, or even their very own mentors. One’s status in a group can change in an instant, from a coveted friend to ostracized in an instant because of people’s prejudiced perceptions that possibly began with misrepresentations by the media and seems to have spread into an oppressive status quo view of mental illness that has the potential to destroy lives and often does.

There is this common portrayal of those experiencing a break down, when they are in crowd and when you hear what they hear it’s everyone one at a time talking about the person breaking down negatively. Part of the oppression these individuals face is their point of view is rarely excepted at face value, and wouldn’t it be all too easy to accept at face value that a partial reason someone experiencing a break down would go through such an experience of hearing others talk about them who may not be might be because that’s fairly close to the oppressive discrimination they will face from that point on as a person who may be on the verge of mental illness.

This sort of torment, in addition to the torment some may experience when symptomatic, make the difficulties faced while seeking recovery in some cases all the more of an obstacle. It seems the most common method of undergoing this process is to find empowerment and emerge from the hurt and shaming, however the obstacles one must face are all to often insurmountable for such individuals for years and in some cases decades. This hurt perpetually faced is enough to break many, and the result at times can be succumbing to all sorts of offensive labels and maltreatment and shaming in some cases reducing the person to view themselves as no longer even being a person at all in the sense one would typically define themselves.

Though some that do recover do attempt to make changes to the oppressive attitudes of others. They blog, they protest, they gather, they inform, they educate.Those empowered few are a voice for those who are going through sanist oppression, who have gone through it, and likely for those who will in the future unless things worsen, in which case they will need to do increasingly more to oppose this discrimination.

For the mentally ill facing oppression the future is often bleak, at times much more so for many than if they were left to face their symptoms, and this would seem to justify one having doubt in mental health “services”. It’s okay to question the validity of these so called treatments because there has been a long history of getting this issue wrong by those meant to be “providers”. If getting it wrong persists by these providers these individuals are likely to see more oppression and more discrimination, which may be worthy of a little help from all of us, supporting their movement, and getting on board with something that may just be the next iconic civil rights movement to face the cruel and oppressive discrimination that has been so common in our human history.

#discrimination #activism #ablism #oppression #Mad