We live in a time when labels are at an all time high. We now have 72 genders. There are 200 identified types of mental illness. For some reason, we humans feel compelled to put a label on EVERYTHING. But is it healthy to do that? It seems to me you're just creating another opening for negative connotation. Think about all of the changes to labels over time, usually because the old label carried so much stigma and negative connotation, the name had to change. Labels are a double-edged sword. They create common language, but also create value: good or bad.
There's one label I don't like at all (even though I just used it in the previous paragraph): Mental Illness. I guess it's better than "crazy", but "mental" isn't a concrete thing: it's the concept of thought, of thinking. It's how our mind (i.e. brain) puts things together and reasons. The brain is responsible for translating what is happening around us or to us, and react, emote. Our frame of reference is mental, but the word "mental" is an abstract idea.
How can it be ill? It's not a real thing; it's just a concept.
Let's stop for a minute and think about it. How do emotions manifest? Where do they come from? It's the brain. That's our mental "muscle", the place where thoughts originate. That is the origin of everything that goes on within us: in our body, in our thoughts, in pain, in pleasure, and on and on. Something happens, and the brain processes the information and responds.
The idea of mental versus brain is an old one, a very old one, from before we even knew what a brain was. It's the brain that releases hormones that in turn create a feeling or emotion. It's true that the release of hormones may come from a "trigger," but then ALL emotions come from a trigger. The trigger event is perceived by the brain, and then the brain does it's job: to create the emotion that tells us what to do next. So, when you get down to it, it's the brain. That organ that we really don't know that much about.
It used to be that mental illness just referred to the most severe illnesses, like bipolar or schizophrenia. Researchers now know that people with those major mental illnesses have brains like the rest of us, but the proportions are different. Thus, the assumption would be that it creates imbalances that cause over-release or under-release of certain hormones or chemicals into the brain, causing thought disturbances, like hallucinations or extreme emotions that can distort perceptions. The science isn't quite 100% certain about it, but it is logical. (My brain tell me that. See what I mean?)
What I'm trying to say is that mental illness is a misnomer, a mislabel, a misperception. When someone has diabetes, do we call it sugar sickness? Do we blame the person for that reaction? No: the sugar is not the cause; the problems are because of an internal dysfunction of the immune system that kills insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Do we tell them that if they just think positively, their illness will go away? No, that's denial, it's absurd, and it's very dangerous. Then why do we blame people with mental illness for their illness? Why do we punish them like it's their fault? Why do we tell them to stop acting a certain way, when they can't really help it?
Somehow, over eons of time, we as humans have come to the conclusion that mental dysfunction can just be reasoned away. We can think it away. But that, too, is very dangerous. That's where the label is really distructive. Somehow, mental health has become separated from the brain, presumably due to a history of ignorance and suspicion.
So why is mental illness called such? It's true that people with mental illness have a disturbance in the way they think, but it's the brain that creates and may perpetuate that disturbance. We can't really control our emotions, but most of us can control -- to some degree -- how we handle or react to those emotions. But for someone with a disorder, that's an impossible task.
For people with a serious mental illness, it's pretty much just the brain itself that causes the problem, which is thought to be proportioned differently than the average brain. Sometimes their brain just randomly dumps hormones into their system that makes them so depressed they can hardly bear it, or so high that they think they're invincible, or they hear voices or see things that aren't there. There's no way they can think that away. For others, their brain has, in a sense, been "programmed" to dump hormones into the body, to varying degrees. They cause mental disturbance of thought, often seemingly irrational or over-reaction.
But regardless, it's the brain, a reaction that starts in the brain, whether created from a series of negative experiences (war, abuse, poverty, racism, etc.), or being born with a brain that's a bit different.
That's why it's important to remember that "the emotions are not the illness, they are the symptoms." That label, "Mental Illness" -- thanks to a sordid history of fear of demon possession to lobotomies to over-the-top, stigmatizing portrayals in Hollywood -- has become an invitation for marginalization, misunderstanding, ignorance, and fear.
It won't be easy, but we need to change that ridiculous label, because now we know better. Well, at least some of us do. That's one of the key ways to make progress away from stigma. Consider this: when you get a pain, that signal comes from the brain to tell you something's wrong in your body. The pain is the signal. In the case of mental illness, the signal from the brain creates mental chaos, distortion of thought, and extreme emotion that can be debilitating. The emotions are the symptoms, and should never be easily dismissed.
Let's overcome, abolish that stigma. It hurts all of us.
Changing the label is first. Education and awareness are the next step to overcoming stigma fueled by ignorance. That ignorance is in our schools, our legal system, and just about everywhere you look. It's systemic, and our society is suffering from the discrimination and denial. And it costs us a lot of money, to boot!
Ponder this observation from The Lancet Global Health website: "From addiction to dementia to schizophrenia, almost 1 billion people worldwide suffer from a mental disorder. Lost productivity as a result of two of the most common mental disorders, anxiety and depression, costs the global economy US$ 1 trillion each year." That means it costs all of us in one way or another. And I'm pretty sure we'd be nicer to one another if we became more understanding through education.
So let's whittle away that stigma, starting with what we call it. Let's be accurate: it's a brain disorder, a brain dysfunction, and a physical illness. It's not an abstract idea (mental), it's physical (the brain's reaction to an event).
Emotions are just the symptoms that tell us something's wrong, not the illness.
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