[NYAPRS Enews] H Post: MI The Final Frontier

Fri May 30 08:49:20 EDT 2008

NYAPRS Note: This article highlights the continued use of stigmatizing
and discriminatory messages about people with psychiatric disabilities
still being spread through the various forms of media today. Stigma and
discrimination plays a major role in almost all public policy issues
that effect people with psychiatric disabilities; mental health parity,
ensuring access to affordable housing, especially the battle against
forced treatment. 

Other forms of discrimination such as sexism, discrimination based on
sexual orientation, and racism continue to slowly erode because of the
years of hard work by advocates. The "Final Frontier" is the battle to
end stigmatizing messages about people with psychiatric disabilities. As
we move forward on this fight we need to ensure that depictions of our
community as "Crazy" or "Wacko" are fought with the same type of fury
that racial and sexually discriminatory messages are. Whether or not you
ascribe the notion that people have the diagnosis's described in this
article, the message of the article remains the same, we need to fight
these messages in the media.

Mental Illness: The Final Frontier

Tom Davis   The Huffington Post   May 29, 2008

You may remember A Time to Kill, a 1996 movie from a John Grisham novel
about a lawyer who took on a racist town. He defended a black man
accused of murdering two white men after they raped his young daughter.

But the high drama came at the end -- easily the peak of Matthew
McConaughey's acting career -- when he faced the white jurors and asked
them to dream a dream.

Imagine a girl, he told them, who was stripped of everything short of
her life. This girl could never have children of her own. She was
urinated on, then tossed into a creek and "left to die," he said.

"Can you see her?" he asked the hushed jury. "Can you see her?"

"Now imagine she's white...."

Some jurors gasped; others picked their heads up, their eyes bulging. A
few looked so appalled, they wept.

One could assume they looked in the mirror, and saw something in
themselves that they hated: Racism, separatism, classism. They displayed
a sense of generosity that, we hope, they gained while growing up and
trying to cope with life in the post-civil-rights era of South. They
determined that the black man, Carl Lee Hailey, was innocent.

Sure, it was only a movie. But it was symbolic of a South that's
changing. A majority of conservatives, liberals and moderates now appear
to share the belief that racism is wrong, even if they continue to
display behavior that has a racist subtext. Those who publicly declare
themselves racists - proud of it, in fact - are now the fringe. They're
the radicals, the minority and, ultimately, the ones whom mainstream
society is now tossing into the creek.

Carl Lee Hailey's case isn't unique; octogenarian men who conspired in
some of the heinous racist crimes of the 1950s and 1960s are now being
brought to justice. Advocacy groups are using DNA testing to prove that
men -- particularly black men -- were wrongly convicted of murder and
other crimes.

Now African-Americans and Latino-Americans are elected to high offices
in the once off-limits states of Mississippi and Georgia. Though their
ideology may promote classism and separatism, even conservative pundits
are quick to cry "racism" if even one of their own crosses the line.

And it's not just racism, but prejudice of any kind that's changing.
Comedians who mocked homosexuality, ethnic groups and races --
particularly by mangling accents and using profane language such as the
n-word -- have toned down their acts. Remember the movie "48 Hours," and
how the Nick Nolte character used the n-word as often as he said "what?"
Years ago, the T.V. version didn't edit the n-word. Now, on TNT, you
won't hear it at all -- not even once.

America still has a long way to go, but it's grown to accept diversity.
America's growth, however, has never been all-inclusive. Perhaps the
final frontier of conquering prejudice -- and finding some happy medium
between mainstream acceptance and political correctness -- is the
legitimization of mental illness.

If the path to racial equality can be measured in, say, thousands of
miles, then the distance toward achieving some mainstream mutual
understanding and feeling of compassion for people with mental illness
must be measured in light years.

Even in this age of political correctness, terms that the mental health
community considers offensive (much like the black community considers
the n-word to be offensive) are still being tossed around, and they're
as much a part of the fabric of society as brushing your teeth and going
to bed. Newspapers such as The New York Daily News and The New York Post
never seem to even pause before blasting the word "Psycho" or "Wacko
Jacko" in a headline. Since 1995, "wacko" has appeared in both The Daily
News and The Post more than 500 times, according to a Lexis-Nexis
search.

Hollywood has shown progress, with movies such as Good Will Hunting and,
more recently, Matchstick Men garnering praise from mental health
advocates and professionals for portraying mental illness in a sensitive
and intelligent way.

But for every Good Will Hunting is a Me, Myself and Irene in which Jim
Carrey portrays schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder (hard to
tell what he's trying to portray, actually) in a manner that's as silly
and stupid as a Gilligan's Island reunion T.V. movie.

The rise of conservative punditry, particularly on the cable news
channels, has only made things worse. Media Matters is quick to jump on
Don Imus for saying "nappy-headed hos" to describe the Rutgers
University basketball team. But how many times has Media Matters done a
You Tube search, inserted the terms "Bill O'Reilly" and "loon" and
witnessed the seemingly endless list of items, each filled with some
form of hate speech either from his legions of fans, or from O'Reilly
himself?

Well, I've already done the search, so don't bother. Eighty-one items in
all. Not all of them were videos of O'Reilly using the word, but his
fans were quick to point out that the featured guests in each video were
of the "far-left loon" variety (would You Tube change the description if
they wrote the n-word instead? Just asking) who deserved the abuse they
were getting.

I was inspired initially when I watched "The O'Reilly Factor" a year ago
(call it a guilty pleasure) and saw Bill berate Sunsara Taylor from the
anti-war group "World Can't Wait" because of her group's loud, rude
protests regarding Iraq. I didn't expect the conversation to be
pleasant, but Bill's cavalier and repetitive use of the word "loon"
seemed to move O'Reilly to a new level of indecency and disrespect.

TAYLOR: Because of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, hundreds of thousands of
Iraqi people's lives have been destroyed, people have been killed,
torture has been committed and legalized

O'REILLY: OK, but look...

TAYLOR: These things are not being discussed the way they should.

O'REILLY: Miss Taylor, that's your opinion, OK, and you're entitled
under the Constitution to your opinion.

TAYLOR: Those are the facts.

O'REILLY: No, they're not facts. You are a loon. You are a lunatic. And
if you weren't a lunatic, 90 percent of America would agree with you.

It's no wonder Congress or various state legislatures have failed to
approve mental health parity health care coverage when society -- as
well as those who act as spokespeople for it -- refuses to take
schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, bulimia
and other illnesses seriously. A poor woman suffering from postpartum
depression has a better chance of getting hospital attention -- or, at
the very least, health coverage -- if she breaks her arm.

Now, just for a second, imagine if she were white...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-davis/mental-illness-the-final_b_10406
7.html 

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