I might every year come up with fresh insight on the topic of disclosure.
Today I think that the belief that a person living with a mental illness “should” want to disclose publicly to others can do more harm than good.
What if you were in a hospital long-term? Not all of us like Susannah Kaysen can turn our experience into a memoir like Girl, Interrupted with a film that took off from her narrative.
For an ordinary person if you were in a hospital for 5 years I understand that you would likely choose to put that past behind you. Who wants to relive any kind of pain by talking about it over and over?
Given enough time between then and now you could have the necessary distance to view and interpret what happened more objectively. I say at that time you can revisit telling others.
Each of us has the right though to Just Say No to disclosure. It’s our choice. It hit me recently that it’s OK not to tell others.
Only I tell a person after they’ve revealed that their nephew/mother/stepson has schizophrenia. Then again I think it’s because I’m open that it gives those people permission to open up.
The choice is always yours and mine. The catch is this: being overtaken by symptoms and ending up in a hospital is a trauma that no one else seems to have empathy for when it happens to us.
We don’t need to have the anti-psychiatry folk shame us for taking medication if we choose to. A mental illness is a medical condition like any other. Yet when the word mental is added before the word illness others think they have free reign to label psychiatry a sham medical profession.
The Mad crowd is quick to advise you and me not to take medication. They think we should then accept what can become a life of permanent illness. Funny how those critics don’t tell us to let our cancer progress without getting chemo or radiation.
I rest my case in a society where those of us who are open and honest face this kind of censure.
I’m all for telling your story only if you want to. Even my literary agent a decade ago told me it’s not my place to tell anyone else to either take medication or not take it.
What I do say to audience members in talks I give is at I’ve been symptom-free and in remission for over 30 years because I’m in treatment.
Who would want to take medication if we didn’t have to? The illness might not be cured however it can be healed.
I’ll end here by saying that we should honor each other’s pain and accord dignity to all individuals whose brains have malfunctioned through no fault of that person’s own.
The science is credible that mental illnesses are real medical conditions. Until the day when others see this light those of us who choose to take medication won’t get a fair shake.
Why shake up our lives and our mental health doing battle with Mad in America combatives?
Think about what I’ve written here and decide for yourself what you want to do. Click on the Disclosure category to the right of the blog to read what I’ve written about the topic before.
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