The Pariah of Mental Illness

        I can't keep track of how many times my mental health has been weaponized by people in my community, members of my family, or authorities and people in positions of power in my life. There are few labels more socially damaging and few labels that strip you of opportunities more quickly and effectively than a mental health diagnosis. 

       Mental illness causes a lot of fear and uncomfortability within society. The misunderstanding of mental illness leads to some pretty sad and horrible things. It can lead to abuse in many forms. It leads to a significant reduction in social status. Being labeled as delusional or insane automatically turns you into an outcast and a social pariah, delegitimizing your perspectives, opinions, or beliefs as the thoughts and ramblings of a "crazy person."

       Once labeled, a significant degree of your opportunities are stripped away, and the mentally ill person is reduced to something akin to a second class citizen in a sense, with a significantly smaller degree of privilege and even rights than the average citizen. It can also confine you to a life of poverty and make upward mobility almost impossible in this society.

       Lets face it, America treats its mentally ill like shit. It leaves millions of people fending for themselves in the streets of our major cities addicted to drugs and getting lack of treatment for the severe mental illness that many of them suffer from.

     Even when there is treatment available, the mental health system is much more about containment and pacification and getting people to be less scary and less of a threat so the community can maintain its peace of mind within its little bubble of safety.

  The system's definitely not there to help you move up in the world. It's definitely not there to help you move into the middle class. It honestly couldn't care less if you are poor for the rest of your life.

     A great tragedy of mental illness is that the culture of a community stigmatizes mental health issues and cripples the mentally ill into a life of poverty, with the exception of one situation. The mental illness that is correlated with immense creativity and intelligence. These mentally ill are the lucky ones. They are the ones who get hollywood movies made about them. 

       These are the ones who actually get opportunities to move up in life. The "Beautiful Minds" or the "Rain Mans" so to speak. Its the Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer complex. Poor Rudolph got bullied and treated so poorly because of a difference that made him distinguishable from the crowd until they found out his difference can be useful. Deviation from the norm is always punished by the group unless of course it is exploitable.

      As for my experience with mental illness? Well, uuuhhh, its been a living hell. I have been fired from multiple jobs because the drugs I was put on made me too tired to function. I have had my religious beliefs called delusion and used against me to commit me to institutions. I have alienated a significant amount of my friends from earlier in life. I have been kicked out of apartments for just saying things that were misconstrued. 

 I have lost my schooling three or four times now. I have been called psychotic when I could carry on fully formed and coherent conversations with people around me. I have had members of my family call me things like psycho and use my mental illness to attack me. I have been physically assaulted to the point where my arms were bruised black and blue for a week by hospital staff and needles stuck in me when all I did was mouth off to a doctor. I've had my dreams crippled by this.

This society made me out to be some sort of monster. Some sort of freak. Something to be left to fend for himself, when I never committed a crime, and never violated or hurt anybody.

I got one thing going for me though. I'm intelligent. I can also write and communicate quite well. This is one of the only things I am good at. Communication and idea forming are my greatest assets. If deviation from the norm is punished unless it is exploitable, I guess I better make myself exploitable.