I'm in a ranting mood, which is rare...I just have to get this off my chest.

I am sick of people on the Internet giving computer chair diagnoses to others who have done harm. I am tired of people equating violence with mental illness. What some people don't realize is that the stigma against people who have a mental illness is so big that everyone shuts up about it and stays in the closet with it, or they simply decide, "I'm not crazy." And they do not get help. It's a very serious issue, but people get away with their ableism, sometimes not realizing what they're actually doing to people who have these diseases. Television (including the media) skews their audiences view of different groups of people in stereotypical ways, and that includes mental illness. Big time. Although there are real life examples of people with severe mental illnesses, it simply isn't always the case.

The truely sane ones are the people who decide to get help. The people I've met over the years who have a mental illness are broken people. Mix in trauma and stress and it can trigger you into a mental illness. This goes for anyone. A lot of them were victims of rape, abuse, or they had a death in the family. Or all three. The list can grow very, very long. The people that I met who had Schizophrenia were calm and at ease from getting help. One person with it was even hitting on me. (Flattering at the time.) Otherwise he was a normal person with an illness. NAMI brought in successful people who live with a mental illness, to try and calm down the stigma that has been pushed into so many people's faces. Trying to get people to realize that they can achieve and eventually have a better life. New people get horrifically scared because they don't want to be deemed crazy or a failure. They don't want to be associated with other people's definition of what mental illness is, which is commonly misinformed as rapists, abusers, gun nuts or even just repulsive republicans. When really sometimes these are the people that's fucked with them one too many times in the first place.

Low self-esteem was common in that hospital (which is why the mentally ill rarely has a strong voice), but we enjoyed wii bowling and played card games and there was a harmony between us after we got off our chest of what has screwed up our lives. What has been digging at us until all you can do is cry. One of my roommates had been raped by her boyfriend repeatedly, not really thinking it was rape, it was just sex that she didn't want... It's always devastating to hear people's stories because you know they have to go back to that life, and they probably haven't sorted their lives out before they're released from the hospital. Like the woman who was born intersex, then her family called her an abomination, someone who shouldn't have been born, someone who will automatically go to hell. Among things you have to clear out your ears for from how surprising verbal cruelty can be. They made her the wrong gender on top of it all.

When I think of the people with a mental illness, (besides thinking about myself as a person with a mental illness) I think of all the people I've met. That person who could barely speak from shyness and felt out of control with her life because of it, or the person who had cancer that triggered me into a sobbing fit. I think frankly, of victims when I think about the mentally ill. Either by the disease itself or the things that has triggered or made them into a nervous wreck in the first place. But they overcome it if they're lucky, and they DO have normal productive lives, while simultaneously being equated with murderers when the normal misinformed people come about.

"Oh no, I meant these types of crazy people." Too late. This isn't a thread trying to enforce political correction on everyone. Because quite frankly it's not my business if anyone decides to be an asshole about it for not thinking of the consequences it upholds. This is a thread trying to get people to realize that people with mental health problems are human beings. They are not in la-la land. They're here. And for the life of me I cannot understand why people aren't listening to the things we are saying. Of course, sometimes I say I have bipolar and people back away from me or assume things that aren't there. Nice huh? This discrimination is shameful, pure and simple.

I believe when it comes to mental illness, it is on a case by case basis, and people aren't doing that. Maybe it's a radical idea, but I don't judge people by their health status. I also don't assume what I don't know about a person... It's disturbing to see shit like this:

On a video about kidnappers. Assumed to be mentally ill and wishing death on the "mentally ill" person. This type of judgement and assumption scares shit out of me quite frankly. For all the troubled people out there, I do not like the thought of say, rapists around rape victims in a hospital. Because that's exactly what will happen if society decides that all the evil in this world is mentally ill.

There's a new group to discuss this kind of thing at called Mental Health Information.