Differences are only bad if society decides they are — As human beings, each of us is more alike than we are different. In fact, we all share 99.9% of the same genes, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute. …

Stigma in the ER — A recent story on CBC GoPublic recently caught my eye. It was about a man who was written off because he was just a psych patient. In April 2018, David Pontone went to the emergency department at Humber River Hospital in Toronto, Canada. He was experiencing severe leg pain. He…

The slippery slope of narcissistic personality disorder and mental illness stigma — Mental illness stigma is a very real problem. Those of us living with mental illness usually aren’t thrilled when people casually toss around mental illness diagnoses as adjectives, such as “she’s so bipolar” or “he’s so OCD” or “everyone’s a little ADHD.” And yet, when it comes to narcissistic personality…

Being effective in challenging mental illness stigma — Patrick Corrigan has been my research crush for a number of years now. And what is a research crush, you might ask? I like how his mind works. He’s a psychologist and stigma researcher, with lived experience of mental illness to boot. He’s one of the most prolific publishers in…

What happened to “thou shalt not kill”? — Two men get killed. Some members of the Christian right are calling the man who killed them a hero and a patriot sent by God. Something isn’t adding up here. On August 25, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse grabbed his AR-15 style rifle and left his home in Antioch, IL, to head…

“High-functioning” often doesn’t reflect the complicated reality — This post is based on some of the conversation generated by a recent post, Is It Helpful to Sanitize Mental Illness? Those of us living with mental illness have a whole rainbow worth of experiences, and I wanted to find a way to represent that. Hence, the rainbow model. Mental illness symptoms There…

The bright lives of Audrie & Daisy are now both gone — I heard recently the Daisy Coleman, who was in the 2016 documentary Audrie & Daisy, had died by suicide. I had watched the film on Netflix a couple of years ago, but I thought I’d watch it again and write a post about it in honour of Daisy. Rape culture…

And yes, this is in 2020 — I recently wrote about whether or not the wording “ committed suicide” was likely to be an effective target for anti-stigma messaging. A commenter mentioned that in their home country, suicide was only decriminalized quite recently. That got me curious about where attempting suicide is illegal to this day. Is “Committed Suicide” Worth Making an Issue Out Of? Or are anti-stigma efforts better focused elsewhere?medium.com

A look at how mental illness stigma can get internalized — Public stigma, involving prejudice and discrimination from outsiders towards people with mental illness, is damaging enough as it is. But sometimes that stigma gets internalized into self-stigma, an unpleasant gift that keeps on giving. How self-stigma develops Researchers Patrick Corrigan and Amy Watson described three broad types of reactions by people who are…