In my last post, I talked about mental illness and how it really is illness.
So I want to enlarge a little more on that.
Everyone (mental health professionals like me included) goes on and on about mental illness and sometimes you hear things like:
- “People with mental illness are violent.” (Which isn’t the case, by the way)
- “I have a friend with mental illness.”
- “Mental illness is really illness.” (Yes, that was me.)
See what’s wrong with those statements? No? OK, maybe it’s not so obvious. Let me explain.
If you’ve seen Chimamanda Adichie’s brilliant TED Talk from 2009, you’ll recall this statement. (And if you haven’t seen it, you totally should! Check it out here: The Danger of a Single Story: the quote is from shortly after the 5-minute mark.)
Although I still get quite irritable when Africa is referred to as a country, the most recent example being my otherwise wonderful flight from Lagos two days ago, in which there was an announcement on the Virgin flight about the charity work in “India, Africa and other countries.”
We’ve probably all experienced it one way or another, haven’t we? Just this weekend, I was listening to an audiobook by a white author I really respect, and he was talking about his “first trip to the dark continent!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: like, people really still think of Africa that way? I could try to understand them thinking of us as always fighting, needing aid, and all, but, dark continent?!
That’s just how it is with mental illness.
Like whites with Africa, we think of “mental illness” as the dark condition. We speak of malaria, hypertension and mental illness, and other conditions.
Ask most people what comes to mind when they hear the phrase “mental illness,” and you’ll find it typically brings up images of half-naked, loosely-clothed people muttering to themselves and tending towards aggressive behaviour. Or they think of a Hannibal Lecter: you know, the cold, psychopathic serial killer type. Either way, definitely not the kind of person you want to hang out with.
But mental illness, like Africa, is far more than that: the scope is vast. There’s depression and anxiety, panic attacks and learning disorders. It ranges from physical conditions that become severe enough to affect the brain to physical symptoms with no identifiable explanation. It even includes behaviour: problems with sleep and eating and sex.* It spans men and women, kids and the elderly.
And all of it is real.
So the next time you hear someone say, “mental illness,” think of Africa, and remember it’s many conditions, not just one. (Tweet that.)
This is the second post in the Understanding Mental Illness series. The first post was What exactly is mental illness, anyway? Don’t forget, you can sign up to get new posts right in your inbox!
*Mental and behavioural disorders is a more complete name, but it’s too long for everyday use.
This beautifully crafted Easy to read and educative. Keep it on Doc
I’m glad you enjoyed it and learned a thing or two. 🙂 Thank you for stopping by!
[…] Neither of these two answers is particularly encouraging. The first one indicates complete cluelessness about what the problem is. The second is an example of the misconception that mental disorders are one big amorphous group of health conditions. (See my thoughts on that in a previous post: We talk about mental disorders like white people talk about Africa.) […]
[…] that is totally right, except that as Chimamanda famously said about stereotypes, it is not complete. As I've explained in a previous post on this blog, the word refers to […]
[…] illness is one single thing. I’ve talked about this before, in a post on my website, “We talk about mental illness like whites talk about Africa.” The fact that her illness is never exactly described does not help educate people who think […]
[…] And this is something I have to keep repeating. I have used the expression “mental illness” and “mental disorders” a lot (I use both to mean the same thing), but I am aware that a lot of people, when they hear that, only think of one or two specific types. I wrote about this in an earlier post: We talk about mental illnesses like whites talk about Africa. […]
[…] on account of his “history of mental illness.” (Unsurprisingly, it falls into the common error, which I’ve written about before, of implying that all mental illness is one […]
[…] genius’, and a title that is unnecessarily almost longer than the list itself: West African: We talk about mental illness the way whites talk about Africa – Doc Ayomide South African: Mortified! I know the owners of this site, which has a review […]
[…] If you want to check out the blog post read more here. […]