With the advent of the Internet in our lives, maintaining personal boundaries has become a difficult task, and sometimes simply unsolvable. A huge amount of information of various kinds, public discussions that expose the weaknesses of opponents, mutual accusations and open publication of personal correspondence … For the mass consumer of modern content, who actively reads magazines and newspapers, communicates on forums and social networks, regularly monitors the electronic media, the boundaries between personal and public has long been erased.
Distribution of labels: who is more?
In social networks, a joke is now quite popular that before the Internet, only relatives knew about the mental abilities of the interlocutor, and now the whole world knows about it. Alas, calling a person mentally ill in the heat of controversy is no longer considered shameful. And this is a completely useless move, if the interlocutor is healthy, he will simply ignore the statement that is offensive to him or answer the offender in the same way. However, the very fact that a mental disorder can be a topic for jokes and manipulation is already thought provoking.
The fact of stigmatization of mentally ill people in modern society is a regrettable reality. Participation in this «witch hunt» is taken not only by private foul language, but also by quite respected media. To better understand the vector of what is happening, let’s turn to the terminology.
The ancient Greek word «stigma» meant nothing more than a slave brand or the brand of a criminal. That is, the stigmatization of mental illness turns people with different potentials and diagnoses into equally dangerous outcasts of our society. Without really going into the intricacies of psychiatry, the media do not hesitate to call mentally ill people maniacs and pedophiles, even when there are absolutely no prerequisites for this. People with diagnoses in advance, in advance, are given to understand that they are not needed by this society. The society of healthy people will protect themselves from them and, first of all, it rejects, isolates such people. It seems that any mentally ill person is simply obliged to guard law-abiding citizens in the bushes all day, and at night run around the area with a bloody axe.
Schizophrenia: is it really that bad?
In fact, the danger and significance in the criminalization of the society of the mentally ill is greatly exaggerated. Recall that the symptoms of schizophrenia are divided into productive and negative. The former do not exclude the presence of extraneous voices in the mind and delusional states, while the latter are characterized by a complete loss of will. The danger for the person himself is precisely the progressive defect and the increase in negative symptoms, up to the complete atrophy of the will. While for others, everything is exactly the opposite. Having reached its peak, the disease not only deprives the patient of the opportunity to commit violence, such patients cannot serve themselves, so there can be no talk of any antisocial actions against others.
One size fits all
Stigmatization of schizophrenics occurs with the tacit consent of those who understand that the disease can manifest itself in different ways and not in every case the patient poses a danger to others. But high-profile cases of crazy maniacs, replicated by the media, are becoming a label that society tries on everyone who seeks psychiatric help. As soon as a person with a diagnosis finds himself in the center of another scandal, journalists immediately draw parallels with previously announced cases. Even if this case is fundamentally different from the previous ones.
Such an attitude provokes persecution of the patient and his family, the personal becomes public, even if it has nothing to do with the diagnosis. People lose their jobs, their acquaintances turn away from them, behind their backs they discuss the intimate details of their lives. Such an attitude not only does not contribute to the return of a person to normal life, but often causes suicide.