by Jeffrey Jason Hill

Created on: April 22, 2009

There are few things in the world that are as stigmatizing as bipolar disorder.

Some stigma, by definition a mark of shame or disgrace, has been debunked and exposed as ignorance and superstition; some others fly in the face of medical evidence and are widely accepted as the gospel truth.

Popular terms - words like "psycho" and "loony bins" - have been with us for a long time; the word bedlam is derived from the famous Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, the world's first and oldest institution to treat the mentally ill (although I use the word "treat" lightly.) In recent years popular stigma of mental health disorders have lessened somewhat by a spate of books on the subject. The oldest I could find was Paul Jay Fink's and Allan Tasman's "Stigma and Mental Illness," published in 1992; one of the latest was "The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda Change" by Stephen Hinshaw, chair of UC Berkeley's Department of Psychology, published in 2007. Quite a few of the errors dealth with Fink and Tasman were still prevalent when Mr. Hinshaw wrote his book fifteen years later. For example, both books mention that media portrayals of the mentally ill as violent and dangerous are as popular as ever.

I have no desire to add to the pantry of popular-stigma out there, but you may be interested in a brief compilation of the misconceptions I ran across myself. I'll set them down here in a style I usually disdain:

1. That the term "bipolar disorder" means it is not as real as a physical illness, such as cancer or heart disease. (Wrong.)

2. That the word "mental" implies it is really just a figment of their imagination and a result of their own bad choices and actions. (Also wrong.)

3. That a mental health disorder means a person is just lazy and unmotivated, lacking stick-to-it-iveness. (In many cases, the mentally ill person will start to believe this and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

4. That's it is "all in their head."

5. That they are more prone to violence and criminal behavior. (Statistics just don't support this; most people who are mentally ill are neither violent or criminal.)

6. That they are somehow themselves to blame, it's their own fault, and they just need to "get over it."

7. That, while no one would think of mocking someone with, say, leukemia, it is perfectly all right and even natural to poke fun at the so-called "illness" of one with bipolar disorder.

8. That they are somehow morally "inferior" to the rest of us.

9. That, because they can put

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