i think us schizos or perhaps i should say “mentally ill” in order not to offend anyone, should join together and become a stronger unity.
in a similar way to how workers form unions.
firstly we should have a word to describe the stigma against us. if a person is prejudiced against skin colour then she is a racist. prejudiced against gender, she is a sexist etc but we have no word for prejudice against a person with a mental illness, although prejudice against us certainly exists. in a way, if there is no word for it, it’s almost like saying the prejudice doesn’t exist, which is obviously not true.
any suggestions? maybe schizophobia or schitzism, any thoughts?
secondly, we could if we wanted, unite and help the less unfortunate amongst us. ie those who find themselves homelesss etc. together we can help them to find new homes.
we are only 1% but if you add sza and bipolar we are more, and a few percent of half a billion in Europe and a few percent of 300+ million in the States, amount to… a lot of people. millions of us.
It’s like 1 in 3 have a diagnosed mental illness or starting to get that high. How do you know these normal people that you think are normal aren’t mentally ill?
I remember when I thought that people were harassing me and I had a stalker. I would think of them a shiz-bashers. That would work on only the people that go out of their way to harass people with shizophrenia, which in my case may or may not have happened. Maybe something like neurotypical-centrics. That seems a bit too long though. What we need is to have a movement help us out. Apparently homo-sexuals used to have it bad in america. Things are improving from what I hear but I can’t say from personal experience just from what I’ve heard. Maybe there needs to be things like lawsuits won where a discriminated sz wins against well people who wrongfully terminated them. Also people in the entertainment industry, the news, and academia need to champion sz. I don’t know how to do all that, but maybe that is what you meant by thinking of a word that shows a person is being prejudiced against sz. Could be the first step. It would have to catch on though. People would have to be active in more circles than just this site, good site though.
yeh what i was getting at is some kind of movement to fight back against the stigma aimed at us. i’m not good at history but i think that blacks had their ‘black power’ homosexuals have their own movement where they fight against discrimination. maybe there’s a place for something similar for those of us with a mental illness. one idea would be just a simple web site where we could post positive acts we’ve contributed to society, could be volunteering, charity work, maybe just walking the neighbour’s dog. try to give the public/normies a more accurate view of people with mental illness, and show we are not all hannibal lectors as often is portrayed by the media. i dunno , just a thought.
I know what you are saying, but most with sz are not strong enough to be out in public to help awareness. Society only sees those who end up committing public crime that warrants news coverage. So that is what they base their opinion on.
Where I live there was an older, physically disabled man (he was in a wheelchair) who shot a lady at the gas pumps. The news reported him as sz who refused to take meds and said he believed the lady was trying to hurt him. There was no sympathy for the man in the article or by people in the community.
The most I can think of are a movie called “A beautiful mind” and a tv show called “perception” I think. I heard that in Europe they were trying to do something about the stigma that sz have but I don’t really know more than that. Mjgh06 has a point in that sz can be so debilitating that it is difficult to get a bunch of sz together to protest like african americans and homosexuals did for their rights. What we need is whenever there is an incident where a person with sz commits a violent act that there is someone to tell them that it is far from the norm. Or maybe to remind them of all sz that try to do the best they can each day.
