> Crazies in General
I wonder if, given the social unacceptability of mental illness, it will ever be socially unacceptable to slur mental illness.
I wonder if, given the social unacceptability of mental illness, it will ever be socially unacceptable to slur mental illness.
Personally, crazy the noun is worse than crazy the adjective.
As an ongoing fact in my life, I've noticed that (a) I use words like "crazy" in broad and insulting ways, and that (b) some people seem to complain about it. And I'm open to being persuaded that I ought to change my ways. But I haven't yet heard an argument that persuades me.
It seems to me that the whole notion of "craziness" or of "mental instability" or even "mental health issue" etc is the notion of socially-atypical behaviour that the speaker judges to be harmful or undesirable (as contrasted with "eccentric", etc). If I hear someone say "that's crazy", I assume they mean "that's weird and I disapprove". (I haven't quite nailed it down. There's a bit more nuance here, in that if someone says "that's crazy", and then someone else says "it's not crazy, it's evil", then you can imagine the first persona conceding the point... so clearly "crazy" sometimes implies a certain degree of helplessness in the bad-weirdness.)
Do you think "crazy" means something fundamentally different from this? Do you actually think it makes sense for people to stop observing that behaviours or people are atypical, or stop observing that they disapprove of particular instances of weirdness?
At this risk of going on a tangent, here's a tangent. Sometimes advocates for people with mental health issues note that it does not make sense to fear folks with mental issues, because such people are more likely to be the target of violence than the perpetrator. What a hilarious fail. I assume that it's true that such people are more likely to be the target than the perpetrator, but I don't care. I care about whether they're more likely to endanger me than an apparently-not-sane person is to endanger me. It's not some kind of zero sum game where being crazy makes a person more endangered and thereby makes them less dangerous to others than they would be if non-crazy.
"Weird" or "bizarre" is perhaps a little more neutral.
This is a witch hunt and the target is any word that can be used to differentiate.
We need to remember that we do not have a right to be offended.
When someone is called crazy, they're making a parallel to a crazy person on a train screaming about how they didn't take their meds.
When someone who has legitimate mental health issues is called crazy, it makes light of a very serious issue that's incredibly difficult. It has next to nothing to do with being offended. We all accept that we have issues that we're mostly able to manage, but you're completely simplifying the problem in an incredibly brazen and unempathetic way.
If you want to see a sample of it, just check out /r/bipolar. When I was first diagnosed, I spent about a week there, but had to stop going because it was too intense.
Completely coincidentally, here's the second post from the top right now that shows just how hard it is to fit in socially: https://www.reddit.com/r/bipolar/comments/4f4se2/i_believe_f...
I feel like I need to invest more in forming connections with people, learning to not feel so extremely uncomfortable around people, becoming interesting and fun to be around as a person, but I don't know how to find strength, energy, and time to do so.
This is a very common attitude.
I do not agree that this is what is intended, or heard, by the overwhelming majority of speakers of English, when that word is used. It seems to me, with a great deal of (fallible) confidence, that people usually mean something much less extreme.
> When someone who has legitimate mental health issues is called crazy, it makes light of a very serious issue
I do not agree that it makes light of the issue. I don't understand what is light-making about it. I do think that it puts the problem in a tidy pigeonhole, which the actual problem probably doesn't fit into. But people do not have infinite cognitive resources, and so they oversimplify things when they think they can get away with it, and as far as I can tell, this is one of those cases. That's not "making light", it's just "not paying a ton of attention".
Perhaps I'm wrong about either of both of those things. That would be a powerful and relevant-to-my-interests case for you to make, and were to you be successful at updating my belief, I would be grateful.
"Citation needed" for this, especially when a post back an opposing opinion was offered:
> not strictly about mental health, implies lack of self-control or good judgement
And please don't declare this as selection bias. This doesn't need to be academic. I'm just offering my experiences that are simply shared with many others. Requesting citation for pervasive issues like this is just an easy way to not address or discuss a complex and complicated issue.
You don't label it as such (as subjective), and I think this is required more when contradicting a previous opinion, with a hint of accusation (i.e. it would imply people using the term would be guilty of something offensive). The comment previous includes the words "not strictly"; meaning "This isn't always what this means, but it can also mean this".
> Requesting citation for pervasive issues like this is just an easy way to not address or discuss a complex and complicated issue
How is shunning "academic" evidence addressing the issue? If it's complicated, there is a need more more precision, not less.
I won't declare this to be selection bias, but I won't assume it's not either. Testimony is a weak form of evidence. Maybe strong or persuasive evidence isn't what you intended to communicate in your comment, but I feel you need to provide something like that in a personally accusatory post ("No, stop that line of thinking. Please."), because it makes someone look bad without strong justification.
The "acceptable use" that you're claiming is basically the same as calling someone or something gay, or someone a fggt (sorry, HN probably bans comments for using that word), even though the person and/or behavior in question has nothing to do with homosexuality. I hope this clarifies things a bit.
But the distinctions between "true" and "false" crazy are ones you just made up yourself; I have no reason to believe this is what the word "says" at all.
The term "true crazy" implies that there is a formal link with the word to clinical mental illness, as opposed to just a euphemism for it.
I'm not suggesting that this isn't a complicated issue, but that there are many ways to go about looking at it and a significant amount start with simply listening to those who have issues and go from there. The other steps include treatment and low level understanding, but the step that's almost never addressed are the societal issues and it needs to be done, sooner than later.
I'm not talking about these issues to convince anybody on any sort of academic level. All I'm doing is expressing my thoughts that MANY others share and live through. It's literally painful that so many people push back on this since it's something that strongly affects me, and many others, so strongly. I talk about it on forums like YC because I want to help others build an understanding of an issue that is never, ever black and white and whose gradients are wide and scattered. By writing, I'm just trying to help others, even if it might be small. The small things add up, though. Demanding that I treat this as academic where my intentions were a discussion and to hope to push others to search for information themselves is just obstructive. I'd hope that if you're so academically interested in this subject, you'd do a simple google search yourself.
But fine, if you want precision, here, have a google scholar search that took 10 seconds to run. Five of those seconds were after forgetting a !scholar in my ddg search, so if you choose to run one, it'll probably take even less time. Woo. These are a good place to start if you want good information.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bullying+mental+illness...
And for completeness, have a book on the subject:
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HOf12LnjtqIC&oi=...
http://www.reddit.com/r/bipolar
There's your citation.
> I'm not going to be academically precise in my arguments
You're the one who mentioned academia. A citation needn't be "academic", it just needs to be anything that demonstrates what you are saying is true. When I put "citation needed" in quotes, I only meant this. And here's why I think you should do that:
> When someone is called crazy, they're making a parallel to a crazy person...
I don't think this is true, And a since it's clear that people in this thread use the word in a way they believe to be benign, I think it's fairly accusatory.
As such, Without backing this up, you're just throwing around an unsubstantiated insult to anyone with the word 'crazy' in their regular vocabulary. If you want people to stop using the word, why not explain why they should, instead of accusing them as "simplifying the problem in an incredibly brazen and unempathetic way".
Your either willfully rewriting history or deliberately unaware of the context of this thread.
This thread started because the author was referring to people harassing him as "crazies". It's not a benign usage.
It really sucks that people will go to such lengths to defend hatred.
false dichotomy. The context of this thread is not the authors harassment; and your example is not a benign usage, but that does not contradict the statement "people in this thread use the word in a way they believe to be benign".
I also believe your post breaks HN guidelines.
Caution, Thought Police patrol this area. Please stop thinking. Freedom Of Thought is not allowed.
I'll think whatever I like, thank you very much. I reserve the right to have opinions that differ from yours. I respect the idea that my opinions ought not impinge on your freedoms. I don't have to like a thing to see the sense in it. Yes, we shouldn't go around calling each other names, it might affect a person in a negative way.
I certainly don't have a habit of going around labeling people ... well, actually, I guess I do: we all make internal judgments about people and things we experience. What I mean to say is I tend not to go around calling people words, because who knows how that might affect the other.
Relating to that quote you provided from r/bipolar, what I really want to see is us crazies, I say 'us', because that quote fits me well too. I want to see us crazies "come out"! I'm crazy and I'm proud! We could have a bumper sticker too: I have Mental Health Issues and I vote.
And anyway, to be well-adjusted to an insane society is no measure of health.
In 2014, there were an estimated 43.6 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States with AMI (Any Mental Illness) in the past year. This number represented 18.1% of all U.S. adults.[1]
One in five of the adult population of the US with AMI. Mental Illness is the new normal. I think there's more to this than "illness". In a similar way to how homosexuality used to be labelled an illness, I look forward to a future where we are no longer labelled "ill" but where society acknowledges that we have some pretty serious issues going on on this planet and our individual and collecting stress-coping mechanisms aren't coping. We are a sick society that has been doing a darn good job of wrecking the biosphere, and through profit-driven motives been working to isolate people so they'll buy more. How anyone can think that isn't going to affect our mental health is beyond me.
I believe a lot of the lower-grade chronic mental illness people suffer is a symptom, like a blocked nose is a symptom of a cold virus, mental health issues are a symptom of failing stress-coping systems. And the stressors are real. Modern life is stressful, it's alienating, it's under slept, over worked, it's underpaid, it's in too much debt.
We're overdue for a societal colonic. Nothing like a good shit to help clear the mind.
1. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/any-men...
That said, the propensity for those with mental illnesses to resort to drugs, false rationalizations and misinformation to assist in understanding their problems makes these issues very, very difficult and complex for everyone involved. For those with mental health issues, removing those soft and hard dependencies is incredibly difficult, since they're so easy to fall to, on top of their prior problems. You're simplifying an issue without realizing that mental health problems are often only the catalyst that's furthered by forced isolationism. For example, although my own mental health issues seem to have been around since birth, they were only pushed farther, possibly permanently, after being put on amphetamines to aid with the bipolar and its comorbid's symptoms.
And quit the bullshit about thought police. I'm just asking for an attempt at empathy with an attempt to not resort to the usual SJW rhetoric.
Holy shit. Just because someone has a mental health issue doesn't mean they're violent. Everyone I know who has mental health issues are the friendliest people I know. This is the exact sort of attitude that makes issues with HR incredibly difficult. And trust me, it is unbearably difficult. I can't explain how many times and how frustrating it is to explain this to so many people. We're mostly sincerely good people, albeit, 'off'. Sorry for my brain, yo.
I have mental health issues. Nearly everyone I care about has mental health issues. Some of those issues are moderately serious problems, some are minor annoyances. It sucks having problems. I'm sad you have problems. I'm sad I have problems. I hope your problems resolve themselves, and/or you learn better coping strategies, and that life is as nice to you as possible.
But none of that changes my perspective that it's reasonable for me to characterize the world around me. And I have a limited cognitive budget. There's a whole bunch I don't know about the world, including mental illness, so I by no means assume that my model is terrific, but I still need to make choices. Y'know, I don't know if it will rain today, but I still need to decide what jacket to wear. Identifying other human behaviour as extreme is useful. Identifying other human behaviour as harmful is useful. Identifying other human behaviour as extreme-and-alarming-in-ways-that-seem-like-maybe-they're-mental-illness is useful. Knowing more would be better, but I've got a whole bunch of shit to learn, and this is seriously not my top priority. Based on all of the above, it seems to me that the only sane thing to do is sometimes identify other people's behaviour as crazy. And since I live in a city, with millions of people, most of the people I meet get an instant shallow analysis, because otherwise I wouldn't get anything done. So for my limited-cognitive-budget purposes, some people are "that crazy person". I don't know if I've never called a person "a crazy", but I don't see a problem with doing so.
To your point in this comment, I never for a moment said that "just because someone has a mental health issue, they're violent". I encourage you to read more carefully. I said that arguing about their probability of victimhood is a logical fail that does not help address fears that such-and-such a person is a threat. It has no predictive value, and will not persuade most people that have the concern in the first place.
> I encourage you to read more carefully.
You should take your own advice.
Again most people in this thread have said: describing behaviours as crazy isn't the problem. Describing people as crazy is.
> but I don't see a problem with doing so
It makes you sound stupid. It makes you sound like that embarrassing racist grandparent.
It creates a culture where it's acceptable to shoot and kill people with mental illness (about half the people killed by US police each year have mental illness). It creates a culture where people with mental illness are discriminated against in the workplace. It makes it harder for people with mental illness to seek treatment.
Stigma kills people.
If you are writing a piece to be published then more appropriate terminology should be used, or you get judged on more professional level along with personal level.
nice, man. The combination of your egoism and [lack of] empathy reminds about that rant of an SF techie against those homeless people because their presence affects his enjoying of life.
Crazy means insane, like belongs in a hospital.
The fact that you don't care that vulnerable people are frequently the victims of violent crime (and partly because they've been dehumanised by people calling them crazies) says more about you than it does about predicting violence.
> If I hear someone say "that's crazy", I assume they mean "that's weird and I disapprove". (I haven't quite nailed it down. There's a bit more nuance here, in that if someone says "that's crazy", and then someone else says "it's not crazy, it's evil", then you can imagine the first persona conceding the point... so clearly "crazy" sometimes implies a certain degree of helplessness in the bad-weirdness.)
But in this thread someone isn't saying "these behaviours are crazy", they're saying "these people are crazies".
I don't care what language you use. But you need to know, so that you can make an informed choice about the language that you use, that when you use words like "crazies" to describe groups of people it's the same to many people as someone who says things like "I got jewed on that deal", or "those uppity negros". You're on the wrong side of history, and it makes you sound like an ignorant bigot. If you don't care about that then go ahead, but if you do care what people think of you then you might want to use different language.
Another reason to stop: by describing people who do things you don't understand as "crazies" you're promoting stigma against mental illness. Since you want people with mental illness to get treatment it seems weird to create a culture that makes it harder for them to do so.
Another reason: Severe mental illness (bipolar, psychosis, borderline) affect about 5% of the population. This will include people you know, or their relatives. You're inadvertently insulting your friends. You probably don't want to accidentally offend people you know. One of the reasons they haven't told you that they (or their loved ones ) are medicated is because your views are stigmatising and discriminatory.
Wrong about what? What claim did I make that's wrong? Oh, wait, you're just assuming that I disagree with you, so that you can be mad. You assume that I assume that mental illness predicts mental behaviour, but I said nothing of the kind. I think? Right?
> Mental illness does not predict violent behaviour.
That's an interesting claim (interesting in the sense that I am interested, but not yet convinced). Two minutes of googling found mild disagreement with your claim, and was in general utterly consistent with my previous beliefs (e.g. [0]). Care to cite evidence in favour of your claim? If it turns out that you're correct about the facts, I'm interested in knowing more.
[0] http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/about-us/reports-stud...
Note, btw, that while the summary at that link makes it look like you're right, when you read the actual findings, it says the opposite of what you claimed.
So, unlike when I wrote the previous comment, now I have started to believe that mental illness _does_, to a small degree, predict slightly increased violent behaviour, though not nearly as much as being young or male or substance-abusing, all of which are about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning.
> The fact that you don't care that vulnerable people are frequently the victims of violent crime
This sentence is you being an asshole. Please stop. Obviously I meant "when I am assessing whether or not I should consider mentally ill people dangerous, what I am concerned with is whether or not I should not consider mentally ill people dangerous, as opposed to some other issue which is unrelated for the purposes of my security". Obviously I did not mean "In general I care about no one but myself" or some other farcical interpretation which no one would admit to in public.
> But in this thread someone isn't saying "these behaviours are crazy", they're saying "these people are crazies".
That is not a correct description of this thread. My comment was a reply to a comment that contained a link, which talked entirely about whether or not it was okay to call people and behaviour crazy. Did you follow the link and read the argument? Your description of "this thread" is a correct description of the original word used in the title of TFA, but the conversation is at this point broader than that. I dunno if I personally have ever called anyone "a crazy", but maybe I have.
> by describing people who do things you don't understand as "crazies" you're promoting stigma against mental illness
I'm not at all convinced that that's true. I think it promotes stigma against the behaviour characterized as "crazy". And I think it's pretty clear that that's what is happening in TFA's title: online harassment is being implicitly characterized as so inappropriate that it brings into question the health of the brain that committed it. I'm in favour of that implicit characterization.
> Another reason: ..... You're inadvertently insulting your friends
I don't agree that I'm insulting the friends, and family, and loved ones, and self, that I know, with mental illness. (You're so cute in your assumption that I'm in the privileged group.) If we're all getting along fine, maybe the problem is you. Or maybe you're right, and I misunderstand everything, and the problem is me. But just stating your implausible claim over and over again is frustratingly unpersuasive.
Thank you, by the way, for not getting distracted by the claim about violence, and after making your comment about it, moving on to the more interesting main point.
Here's one example of a well run meta analysis that includes self harm in the list of "violent behaviour": https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/depts/hspr/research/ciemh/mhn/pr...
(Note that the UK part of that paper is not talking about mental illness in the general population, but is restricting itself to a tiny subset of that population. Not just inpatients (about 8% of the people under specialist care) but people in a forensic unit. Those people are there because of a criminal justice involvement in their care. Even in this group of violent people we see a small group of people are responsible for most violent events.
This narrowing of focus - not all people with mental illness, but smaller and smaller sub-groups is why saying "crazy people are dangerous" is just dumb. You have to (using the link you provided) say "crazy people, with this particular diagnosis, when they're not getting treatment, are a little bit more dangerous than the general population, but less dangerous than parents, and less dangerous than poor men, and less dangerous than people with a substance addiction."
And even then you've failed to distinguish between "people who are violent because they have mental illness", and "people who are violent and co-incidentally have mental illness".
The group at most risk of homicide is children under one, and the people doing the killing are parents or step-parents. Why aren't you calling all parents dangerous?
http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandj...
Focussing on mental illness and violence is sub-optimal because it focuses on a very small risk and it focuses on something which provides no predictive value. When you have someone in front of you and you want to know whether they're going to be violent or not knowing that they have a mental illness, even a severe and enduring illness, doesn't help you. Knowing that they are (various combinations of) male; poor; addicted; a (step)parent or (ex)partner; are all more useful to you.
But this ignorance about the minimal risks of violence from people with mental illness causes actual measurable harm. About half the people shot and killed by US police each year have a mental illness. (Although it's hard to get accurate numbers because the US doesn't collect this data).
http://www.bbmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centreforsuic...
Sorry for the long and complex report, but it's best quality evidence that the UK has about homicide by people with mental illness. Page 30 is homicide in England. Most homicide is committed by people without mental illness; most people with mental illness have no connection with violence. People with mental illness are not over-represented in the group of people convicted of homicide.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandj...
> I'm not at all convinced that that's true. I think it promotes stigma against the behaviour characterized as "crazy". And I think it's pretty clear that that's what is happening in TFA's title: online harassment is being implicitly characterized as so inappropriate that it brings into question the health of the brain that committed it. I'm in favour of that implicit characterization.
Well, this feels like a contradiction. You start by saying it's not promoting stigma; you end by saying crazy people do hateful things. Why use the word "crazy", why not use the word "asshole"? There are so many other words you could use it seems a shame to marginalise an already marginalised group.
(Also, it's against HN rules to call other people assholes. Your ignorant first post is you being an asshole, but I didn't call you an asshole. You should probably stop doing that.)
See, I go into hypomanic states and do things that are what you'd typically see from a "crazy" person. Buzzing my head, getting into bad financial situations, intense obsession, etc. When I do those things, I'm usually aware that what I'm doing isn't 'normal', but since the rationalizations flow pretty thick, the corrections are nearly impossible to act on. Medication helps, but everything I've tried has significant side effects that are almost as bad as the illness itself. Being called crazy, or receiving comments or looks that imply craziness rather than applying basic empathy skills... fucking sucks.
"Hah, what are you, schitzophrenic?" "That guy's nuts" "Why would you do that, are you insane?" "Noise sensitivity? That's fucking weird.." "I'm quitting because people are calling me crazy my back. It's just childish.." "What? Grow a thicker skin!"
It's out of our control and we do the best that we can to avoid the problems we have, so being called "crazy" is just another slap in the face. It effects our daily lives, our job prospects and, well, every aspect in our life. It's similar to issues of race, regligion, etc, but since it's an enormous aspect of our thought process, it's just.. different, so the social stigmas are almost incomparable. Not to mention that it has a near identical stigma to a homeless person screaming on a train. It fucking sucks.
So what do you suggest we call people that behave far outside society's bounds and are impervious to reason?