I've often said, that as a mentally ill man, I am invisible at all times, except when I am threat. The fact that I am never a threat (no more than anyone else that is) and the fact that the vast majority of severely mentally ill people cower at home too scared of the public to go out, rather than running around the streets attacking passers-by at random, is lost on most people. Everything about the way we are treated is wrong. I often feel I get ignored because the person I am contacting believes that I am a threat to him or her. It is rather ironic. Then when I do become unwell I do get noticed - by the Police, Social Services and mental health services. This is the limit of my presence. And the language is also as bad. Over the period of the unfolding terror of the Norwegian attacks by the right wing terrorist Anders Breivik, the loon factor came up again and again. I am the same as him, according to these well educated journalists in the media. Severely mentally ill.
And the language demonstrates the attitude of most people. It is the tip of the iceberg. I have often argued that with all the Political correctness that has invaded every aspect of public and private life, the mentally ill were effectively excluded from this. With new legislation on disability discrimination we are excluded from that also. Not via the letter of the law, but the unwillingness of people to stick to it. For example, pretty much every time I have contacted a solictor about an issue affecting me, outside of the Mental Health Act and getting entangled with mental health services, the solictor I contact turns me down for representation automatically, after mentioning my health problem. They don't even listen to my argument. It happened recently. I did not even speak to the solicitor concerned to explain to her what I wanted to achieve. She left two messages on my answer phone saying they didn't have the capacity to help me. There wasn't even a discussion about what I wanted, so how did she know? My theory is that solicitors consider the mentally ill unreliable witnesses in court and therefore unless you've been banged up they don't want to know.
On Radio Five Live I was listening to Tony Livesey and guests discuss the pie thrower at the select committee hearing for Murdoch and the phone hacking scandal. At one point Tony and his guests all agreed that the attacker should be down graded from stupid to loony - in other words he wished to differentiate between stupidity and mental illness - that one was slightly higher than the other.
In another BBC incident of stigma, Jeremy Vine, arguably one of the country's leading broadcast journalist and presumably Oxbridge educated had two guests on at different times, discussing two attacks on members of the public by severely ill people. One wife of a GP who was used to welcoming various patients into her home, allowed a female suffering from schizophrenia into her house, when she was distressed. The woman attacked her with a knife. She was lucky to escape with her life. She was kind enough to understand and to forgive her. But at one point the victim of this poorly woman, said that the woman had 'super human strength', 'like they do,' meaning that when a person becomes mentally ill he or she becomes physically stronger. AND, Jeremy agreed with her! I was astonished. I was shocked and angry! What do people think, that we're all like David Banner! That we can pick up a car with our bare hands, that it takes ten Police officers to control us when we become distressed and angry? It is a myth. If anything we become weaker, because under the haze of drugs we sleep away our lives and as anyone who has cared for someone who is bed ridden, muscles waste away if you don't use them. Besides the fact, that it is an idea that has come from film, television and fiction. The mentally ill don't really experience super human strength. IT'S FICTION! How stupid can people be?
I also wrote to a lot of people over the years to ask them to help me campaign for better rights for mentally ill people. An incredible amount of people ignore me. I have written to politicians, famous psychologists and psychiatrists, bosses of big companies and organisations. Some have written back, most have not. I wonder what would have happened if I had been a Radio Two broadcaster or a famous psychologist? What do the mentally ill do about being forced to take drugs and getting locked up without trial, when the people who are doing this to us, believe that it is right? Everyone can now see that the slave trade was wrong. But at the time they couldn't see it. They fought a bloody war - the longest and bloodiest war that America has ever fought to keep the slave trade in place. They did the same with the civil rights movement in the sixties. Also, the public believe they need to be protected from people like me. They don't. They are and we are just being lied to. We believe media stereotypes and works of fiction and because we're frightened we find it hard to change our beliefs. That's why this issue above most others, is so essential and cannot and must not be ignored.
