What shade of normal are you?

Mental illness is getting a lot of press lately.  Unfortunately, most of this press coverage only paints a picture of mental illness as the face of a deranged killer.

Today, I would like to paint a different picture. 

The picture I want to paint shows that people with mental illness can and do recover.  We lead productive lives.   We contribute to society. 
I would like to share a Ted Talks video of Elyn Saks.   Elyn Saks is an Associate Dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Gould Law School.  She also happens to be a person who lives with mental illness.    Elyn Saks suffers from schizophrenia. 

She is very candid and frank in this video about her symptoms, and her struggles with her illness.  She is also frank about recovery, treatment and stigma.    I feel it is time to offer other examples of mental illness, to begin to paint a new picture of people who live with it.

What would happen if we begin to treat mental illness differently?   What if we accept it like any other illness?

Other illnesses used to be stigmatized.   Cancer used to be stigmatized.   It was only spoken about in whispers.  Hidden from the world.   Today, of course, cancer is seen differently.   It is an illness.   There is treatment for cancer.  People who have it are supported.  Survivors are revered.    Interestingly enough, cancer cells are present in all of our bodies.    They are 'normal'.   Sometimes, for reasons that are still not fully understood, the cancer cells multiply and become more prevalent in certain people.  

What if we thought of mental illness this way?   Maybe all illness is a spectrum.  The best way I can think of to describe a spectrum, is to think about color.   Light pink, medium pink and hot pink are all at different ends of the pink spectrum.   Light pink may seem different than hot pink.  But hot pink and light pink are in fact, both still pink.
If illness is a spectrum, maybe we all have a touch of it.   Maybe this means that illness is in fact part of 'normal'.   Illness is a normal part of life.     I am just as normal as you.    I am just a different shade of normal.  What shade of normal are you?

 

 

We can work together to make a difference.   We can change minds.  We can change perceptions.    We can end stigma.