EDITED: I have changed the content of the blog to reflect my own experiences and take out the assumptions I incorrectly made about others. I apologise for the mistake, it was unintentional, and thanks for pointing it out.
The language used in the mainstream media and across social media in the last few days has really upset me. Whilst people seem to be careful around their use of the more racially and religiously sensitive words it seems this is not the case for health related terms. The words psychopath, nutter and nut job have been used so much to describe the person who carried out these attacks both in national newspaper headlines and in daily life.
I want to make it very clear that people who are mentally ill are not causally linked to evil acts. There may be some people who are mentally ill who do evil things, and there may be people who are mentally healthy who do evil things. But there are many more people with mental health problems who are not evil, nor do they do evil things. We live ordinary lives, have ordinary jobs and study in ordinary educational settings.
People who are mentally ill are so often stigmatised when it comes to violent and horrible acts. We are scapegoated and grouped together under this horrible title of nutter or psycho. It is damaging and it carries on the stigma that people with mental health problems have to cope with everyday on top of dealing with the effects of their own impairment and the massive barriers that already exist in society.
Be careful with your language. The word psycho and nutter/nutjob is the equivalent of some of the nastier racial slurs. The very fact I have written the ones regarding mental health and wouldnt consider writing the racial ones, just demonstrates the difference there is with both..
If you see it, challenge it, in just the same way as you should challenge someone using racist and religious based insults. It is wrong, and it is hurting people. Suggest other words that are better, because people often don't realise that there are better words to describe the characteristics of a person, such as evil, manipulated, coerced etc etc.
please think about what you are saying before you say it because it can cause offence.
