Mental illness is a powerful tool for silencing dissent.
It has long been lamented by BAME commentators, e.g. comedian
Lenny Henry, that minorities are underrepresented in the media. This has since led to attempts in wider culture including broadcasting and journalism to redress this perceived gap. Even more recently a backlash against any such attempts has occurred; a good example of this is the
#NotMyDoctor/
#DoctorWoke Twitter campaign against the first woman actor(s) in the lead role of the BBC television programme Doctor Who, a show which now also
features a young black male who suffers from dyspraxia, an Asian female police officer, along with the alleged ‘token white male’ who has cancer, all as her companions.
The
Black Lives Matter movement is another good example of a modern day movement which promotes justice and equality, specifically for black people. The organisation has recently dominated media headlines around the world, with its mass protests and outpouring of anger regarding the death of an unarmed black man by US police (it remains to be seen what long term gains the movement will achieve). Similarly, the
#MeToo movement, which spiked in popularity a few years’ ago, has led to a higher awareness of rape culture/sexual harassment, and several high profile arrests, recently culminating in the sex crime convictions of movie ‘mogul’ Harvey Weinstein. #MeToo is closely related to the modern feminist movement.
In general the rights of women and most minorities have inarguably improved since over the past century in many countries. The LGBTQ community has also made gains, most recently in the UK with the
legalisation of same sex marriages and the
Gender Recognition Act of 2004. So it appears that modern day society can pat itself on the back, safe in the knowledge that we are more ‘tolerant’ and ‘civilized’ than we used to be, back in the Dark Ages - at least at first glance.
Dig a little deeper, however, and aside from the growing backlash against this so called ‘politically correct’ culture (which roughly translated to anyone with an ounce of empathy or compassion means people who on the surface are not considered ‘traditional’ or ‘normal’ - whatever that is - exist, have feelings and rights as well) there is an obvious and worrying omission from this self congratulatory idea that we are such an accepting and forward thinking bunch.
The fact is that disabled people have had their rights actively trampled on over the past decade and longer, in particular in the UK, and the silence over this in wider society and mainstream media is deafening. The UN has gone as far as to publish a report on the
human rights abuses against the sick, disabled and poor by the UK government, but this is underreported and many remain unaware and often as a result unconvinced that there is a problem (after all, many believe that if the MSM does not report something, it must be ‘fake news’). As far as the media goes, disabled people are grossly underrepresented in fictional dramas (although the aforementioned dyspraxic character in DW is a notable exception). And disability hate crimes have
rocketed in the past few years.
A good barometer for the attitudes of the wider public towards minorities is the popularity of characters and language used in serial dramas (e.g. Coronation Street or EastEnders). For one, it is much more common to see regular BAME and LGBTQ characters in these programmes, who are well loved by viewers, than disabled ones. And when the subject of issues like mental illness are approached, while portrayals are often well researched and sensitively played, they are not something that can be overstated. Interestingly, actors who take on the role of someone suffering mental health issues are often nominated for ‘best actor/actress’ awards by the public, which implies that viewers think it must be very difficult to put oneself into the shoes of a mentally ill person - suggesting a perceived disconnect between them and such people.
Also, derogatory language about the mentally ill is often seen as much more acceptable amongst characters portrayed as generally ‘good’, as opposed to the language used by those who are seen as ‘bad’; this isn’t something you will see regarding other minorites in society. For example, the ‘n’ word in relation to black people, or the ‘p’ word in relation to gay men, would never be used by such characters, whereas this is not the case in relation to a mentally ill person. Words like ‘looney toon’, and ‘nutter’, are perfectly acceptable, and soap fans are often even encouraged by some articles in popular media to tag certain characters with nicknames like ‘Mad May’, or ‘Psycho Steven’.
While this might seem like a triviality, or being overly ‘PC’, it’s worth pointing out when you consider that the mentally ill do routinely have their rights removed from them, and mental illness itself is used as a weapon to delegitimise the lives, experiences, thoughts and feelings of those who are seen as suffering it. No other minority, save for (in certain cases) people with learning and developmental disabilities, or any that breaks the law (and while certain minorities can be discriminated against legally, many changes have been made over time to address this), can be held against their will, and while abuse in prison is rife, there is no officially state sanctioned abuse, at least in the UK at present, in such institutions. The same cannot be said of psychiatric hospitals, where shock treatments are still routinely carried out on people diagnosed with mental illnesses, often against their will.
Electroconvulsive therapy, as this procedure is called, induces seizures in patients, and it is well known that this causes cognitive damage to the brain, shown in side effects such as memory loss - sufferers of epilepsy report having no memory of episodes of seizures, and many people who undergo ECT also report serious memory loss around the period of time they are receiving multiple courses of the ‘treatment’.
A diagnosis of mental illness is used against sufferers to deny their experiences, especially when the diagnosis is psychosis related in some way. The assumption is that as the condition tends to cause a break with consensus reality, or at least reality as defined by official institutions including psychiatry, that any experience not obviously supported by these institutions or obvious to anyone else besides the sufferer, is imaginary and ‘all in the mind’.
This is especially problematic when you consider that anything which only can be witnessed or experienced by a sufferer, such as an internal bodily experience, or something only they are party to for various reasons, can therefore be potentially dismissed. Something such as being abused by another person when only the other person is present, or experiencing a distressing side effect of a medication, or even a symptom of a serious illness, can be dismissed as pure fantasy, and this makes anyone who has psychosis or a psychotic disorder particularly vulnerable to unscrupulous and malevolent actions by other people. This includes mental health professionals, and abusers and those with sadistic personalities often choose to work in institutions expressly to take advantage of those who are supposed to be protected and/or cared for by the institution.
Having symptoms of illnesses ignored is such a problem for people with mental illnesses that there is a name for it:
diagnostic overshadowing. Many sufferers die at a young age or younger than they would if they did not have a mental health problem, because of this. This kind of discrimination is not confined to institutions and health care professionals, however; it pervades the whole of society.
Social media has potentially given everyone (with internet access) a voice, but as with everything, some voices are louder than others. With such outlets for self expression has come a plethora of ‘conspiracy theories’, and ideas which are not supported by mainstream institutions. A common ‘put down’ used by SM commentators is to suggest someone who holds a view which could be considered ‘outside the official narrative’ is mentally ill. Some even pretend to be concerned for such people, when clearly it’s a way of disempowering the other person and delegitimising their opinion. And while it’s perfectly reasonable that the person’s view might be incorrect, it’s the fact that mental illness is used at all as the put down that shows how it is used to silence dissent.
Indeed
belief in conspiracy theories is associated with schizotypy, according to the scientific community. Of course, scientists have reason to take issue with ‘conspiracy theorists’, given the number of non conventional beliefs and attacks on their work. Mental illness is the best put down of them all to use against them. However it is worth noting that many people with mental health problems do tend towards non conventional beliefs and so called ‘conspiracy theories’. But the assumption by wider society as seen on SM that these beliefs are a direct sign of mental illness is purely that; an assumption, but a useful and powerful one, when aiming to ‘take down’ an opposing view - and opponent - in an internet discussion. Such scientific ‘discoveries’ only serve to silence dissent even further. It would be extremely naive at best, to think that everything we are told officially is 100% true, and powerful institutions are always 100% honest. There are many examples from history that show how these institutions cannot be trusted.
So mental illness is a way of keeping dissenting voices quiet, and disempowering people. Much debate can be had over widely shared beliefs within the mentally ill community, such as the commonly held idea that someone - such as a government agency - has placed a chip in one’s head, or powerful people have ‘tuned into’ one’s thoughts and can hear them. It is interesting that so many have similar experiences, and it does add weight to the idea that the experiences are real. I have had such ideas; a few years ago I truly believed that the police/the state were communicating with me, and had agents in my neighbourhood, tormenting me for their own amusement, and spreading gossip about me in the local area. Of course I also have a diagnosis of mental illness. Which may or may not mean the reader of this article sees its author in a new light, and dismisses everything they have read in it. But that’s the power of the negative connotations around mh issues, and kind of proves the point - that psychiatric diagnoses are weapons that are routinely used to abuse, persecute, dismiss, control and take people’s human rights away from them, on a daily basis. One wonders when Twitter campaigning on equality for the mentally ill will take off.