Columns

As people with mental illness, we are not afforded basic respect. Our words aren't taken as valid, aren't believed, and are dismissed as nonsense and a product of defective minds. Our express desires and needs are often ignored--or worse, are used as part of their material for your clinical assessment. This is not precisely the same thing as "not taking us seriously." It is more a circumstance in which no one accepts what we are telling them in the manner we intend. And this is worse. 

Prior to the ascendency of many Black intellectuals, inferior intelligence was attributed to Black people. However, for the foreseeable future and in present day, inferior intelligence is presumed of those who suffer from a mental illness. And people ought to realize they are making the very same mistake and creating the same kind of bigotry. 

Mentally ill people are not automatically of low intelligence. While some of us do have impeded cognition, some are sharp as a tack, including and especially when we are medicated. You can be brilliant and mentally ill at the same time. A different area of the brain is responsible for mental illness compared to the area that generates intelligent thought. 

(Even when a person with schizophrenia is delusional, they can be quite brilliant. And when we have symptoms, intelligence is betraying us, because we might have brilliant thinking driven by delusional assumptions. And for some, this is a perfect storm.) 

Mentally ill people may have a harder time with expressing ourselves or with coming across to people as knowing what we are talking about. When we are not being believed, the other end of the dialogue, that of the "normal person," is absent, and this is part of the problem. 

In our interactions with people, when we are taken for stupid, it does harm to us--not physical harm but mental harm. The erroneous perceptual filter in which we are incorrectly seen as dumb, (the way many people see us, including treatment professionals) harms the normal process of developing a better intellect. It also harms our self-esteem. And it harms our belief in ourselves and in our potential. 

When I am dealing with a treatment professional or someone else who believes in her or his own intelligence, I can usually tell when they don't believe in mine. The ones with whom I can actually be on the same page tend to be of higher mental power compared to those who have a bit less brainpower but, astonishingly, a lot of self-value. 

Either through gossip or through a visual evaluation, many people in the general public can discern that someone is mentally ill and medicated. When we have the label "mentally ill person" pinned to the fronts of our shirts, it is an automatic disqualifier in many people's minds for anything to issue from our mouths worthy of consideration. When people look at us and decide we are mentally ill and therefore are idiots, anything we say will be dismissed. 

What does a smart person look like? Answer: she or he looks like they have breath and a heartbeat, are not in a coma, and in whom rigor mortis has not set in. That is all you can really say in terms of judging someone by how they look. And when society excludes us, and this is always for bogus reasons, we are in the category of those not heard. 

What I've written above hasn't come from my imagination. If I confront a mental health professional for saying something prejudiced, I'm told that the thing about which I'm complaining doesn't exist. "Of course, we respect you! Of course, we acknowledge you!" Or another one is, "What specifically makes you feel that way?" 

When a counselor takes us for an idiot based on being mentally ill, it is usually obvious. It becomes less obvious when the waters are muddied with invalidation. We are told that our perception of being disrespected isn't real. I have news for you: It is real. In some instances, we must supply our own validation. And this can require bravery. 

I'm not claiming that a disability doesn't exist. When I applied for Social Security, the examining psychiatrist said to me "If you're on medication you are disabled." The medications we are forced by circumstances to take are crippling enough that competitive work is not always practicable. If we tried to do without meds, on the other hand, we'd be playing Russian-Roulette with our brain condition. 

Solutions? Create self-worth. Disbelieve in the falsehoods that people send your way. Stay strong in your certainty that you have capabilities, that you have brains, and that you will prove wrong the doubters and the skeptics. If this creates a rift, in which you believe differently about yourself than how others perceive you, so be it. They might assess this as "delusions of grandeur"--yet they could be wrong about this. In short, value yourself. 

You cannot judge intelligence or someone's value through how they look. In the past, this was applicable to Black people. Now, we know better, apart from white supremacists and white racists. Now, we must extend that umbrella to include this: you can't judge someone solely based on their position in life, including having a mental health diagnosis. And it starts with us. Because if we don't believe in ourselves, no one else will.