not to be rude but can people with depression and anxiety stop acting like they speak for all experiences of mental illness??
or like can we stop pretending like the categories of mental illness are
A. People with Mild Depression/Anxiety aka The Overworked, Relatable College Student
B. Violent Criminals Who Are Truly Not Human At All and Certainly Are Not Like Us, aka The Homeless Guy Talking to Himself On The Subway and The Killer We Bring Up To Prove We’re Like Typical People By Comparison
(which, damn, y’all, how do you manage to convince yourself those aren’t classed and racialized understandings? get back to me on that. also i hate you)
i genuinely cannot tell you the number of times i’ve been thrown under the bus by people “"advocating to reduce mental illness stigma”“ because my symptoms or diagnoses were ugly. because they were scary and uncomfortable.
let me say that again: i’ve literally been disregarded and marginalized by people trying to reduce mental illness stigmatization because my mental illnesses are… too stigmatized. because they go beyond anxiety and depression. that… that’s a really shitty feeling, folks.
like, "mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of!!!! oh, uhhh, except for you. you should be ashamed and also you should…. leave. or at least can you stop being so loud about that thing? you know we’re trying to be accepted, here, and you’re making it harder for us”
if your mental illness activism in any way involves drawing distinctions, stated or not, between
1. “severely mentally ill people” who shouldn’t have access to jobs, school, higher education, healthcare, insurance, housing, public spaces, basic human rights, etc.
2. “everyone else — including me, we’re just like you, we’re not like them!!!!”
all you’re doing is playing at respectability politics.
and if your work doesn’t actively center people designated as “severely mentally ill,” you’re doing the same.
at the absolute very best, all your activism will do is slightly expand the definition of what allows people to qualify as, y’no, capable, worthy humans until it can include yourself, and you’ll leave us to die out here.
because we won’t just get swept along in your benevolent tide of “having depression is a-okay!”, and deep down, you know that.
so stop fucking speaking over people whose mental illness/es are “ugly” or still more stigmatized than anxiety and depression. stop pushing us aside, stop ignoring us, stop relegating us to the edges, stop using us as rhetorical devices to make yourself look better by comparison.
