Thanks to Beyond Blue reader Larry Parker for writing the following post as part of “The Doxieman Blog” which you can get to by clicking here:

I fight the good fight against stigma against mental illness. But I was taken aback by the truth of something I read recently in Pete Earley’s seminal book “Crazy.” (As he notes, the description is of the system, not the people in the system.)

The federal government (i.e., the NIH) says mental illness is a chemical imbalance, and because of that it’s a sickness and not something … that anyone seeks or wants or deserves to get any more than he seeks, wants, or deserves to get a cold. 

But deep down, we really don’t want to believe that’s true. Because if we did, we would have to admit: It could happen to us. It could happen to me. And that is such a frightening thought that we quietly search for explanations to prove that the mentally ill aren’t really like us and they somehow deserve the torment they suffer.

Why is it, for example, that a no-brainer, common-sense reform like community mental health care — closing down the horrible Gothic mental hospitals and bringing people who could largely if not entirely live on their own into small group homes — was given up on immediately? Even as more dubious social reforms of the 1960s, such as Aid for Families with Dependent Children (an oxymoron if ever there was one — welfare broke up families BY DESIGN), persisted for three decades?

Because it meant that mental health consumers would be among us — not “safely” in Bedlam in London or Bellevue in New York. (Of course mental health consumers are always among us, but “don’t ask don’t tell” allows plausible deniability.)

I will fight the stigma against mental illness until the day I die. But I think my fellow Beyond Blue member Melzoom is more on track as to how this will finally start to end.
In America, 1 in 11 people have mental illness. And that means a lot more people are touched by mental illness in some way or other — to see a friend or family member as human instead of a monster.

I’d make an analogy to the racist patriarch whose son or daughter marries someone of a different ethnic background and has a family. Suddenly he must accept his multiethnic grandchildren or destroy his family.

Likewise, the families and close friends of those with mental illness must accept us or lose us. I think more of them are making the right choice.

But it’s still heartbreaking — to us personally, and to our society — that some don’t.

To read more Beyond Blue, go to www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue, and to get to Group Beyond Blue, a support group at Beliefnet Community, click here.