by K.D. Saffron

Created on: September 08, 2008   Last Updated: September 22, 2008

Life is rarely fair and for society's mentally ill citizens, life is unbearable. The long held stigma for people with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disease follows them as they continue to survive a world that no one cares enough to enter or to change. These unfortunate people are afflicted with a diseases that society rejects immediately. Society has no tolerance for them or their illness, and historically their own families have rejected them. As well, many families still "hide them away" in undisclosed mental institutions where unthinkable human rights violations can occur unnoticed or reported. This allows the families to carry on with their normal lives without the stigma that has been thrust upon these people for centuries. In the "state" institutions, many will live out their days and reach their death in seclusion much as they had lived, hidden from society.

Many of the mentally disabled are too scared to seek help due to the stigma that is attached to mental illnesses. Alone and apprehensive, they try their best to carry on a near normal life while keenly aware as to what it would mean for them regarding housing, employment, family, and even a marriage. These people live and survive in our world totally as outcasts without the possibility of being defended regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation. The rights afforded each of us based upon the writing of the United States Constitution clearly do not exist for the mentally ill. Their basic human rights are violated three-hundred and sixty five days a year and not an eye is batted. No one or any group defends the stigma laid upon these well meaning, brilliant, and at times functioning people.

They defend themselves, just as they lived, alone. They contribute to society under assumed names because they must. What a shame that potentially life-saving medicines or techniques cannot be discovered simply because society has told us that these people are a waste.
While many try to wish away their existence or even worse order them to confinement in "state mental hospitals", they continue to live and breathe as you or I, except not in freedom.

While hospitalized, they are stripped of all dignity, usually for no good reason except for their mental illness and the convenience of the staff. They try to live out their days as best they can. In the institutions, many devise ways to make the time pass. They are like a caged animals and they study in great detail every aspect of a "quiet

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