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Cursing the Deaf

 

Dr. Coplan takes on the stigma of mental illness, and what the autism community needs to do to address it.

 

In this post, Dr. Coplan takes on the stigma of mental illness, and what the autism community needs to do to address it.

Cursing the Deaf

In ancient times, slaves and criminals were marked with a brand (stigma, in Greek) that was burned or cut into the skin. Eventually the word “stigma” came to mean anything that marked a person as set apart from the rest of society. Hester Prynn’s scarlet letter (“A” for adulteress), the dunce cap, and the yellow star prescribed for Jews under the Nazis, are more recent examples of “stigmas” applied to individuals or members of a class to mark them as unfit or inferior. Stigma is closely related to the concepts of taboo (a Polynesian word for something that is prohibited or unclean), and ostracism (again from the Greek: ostracon – a broken shard of pottery on which a person’s name would be written, and then tossed out of camp as a way of symbolizing the banishment of the person himself from society). All three concepts are linked to the common denominator of shame.

Taboo, stigma, and ostracism have been used since the beginning of human history as tools to regulate social behavior. Certain taboos (murder, theft, dishonesty) are fairly universal, and are essential to the maintenance of civil society. Whether stigma and ostracism help matters is open to debate. My own view is that perpetrators need to be stopped, but without being shamed.

However, when it comes to mental illness, this entire line of discussion is really beside the point.

“Thou shalt not curse the deaf,” says the Bible. One of my children had to write an essay on that verse for her Bat Mitzvah. “First,” she began, it means exactly what it says: Don’t yell at a deaf person. “Then,” she continued, it means “Don’t talk about someone behind their back, when they can’t defend themselves.” And finally, she concluded, it means “Don’t yell at someone for something they can’t help.” This, I think, is the heart of the matter. Being mentally ill is not a lifestyle choice. It’s an illness, just like diabetes or asthma or cancer. Stigmatizing someone for being mentally ill is on a par with cursing the deaf. (If you are reading this and you have mental illness, remember that stigmatizing yourself for something you cannot help is equally inappropriate. Being ashamed of yourself is a waste of energy. Spend that energy working on your issues. No one is beyond help – not even you.)

Through her tireless efforts as a speaker and public citizen, Temple Grandin has demystified and de-stigmatized ASD. But have you heard of Elyn Saks? I’ll bet not. Take a look at the following videos (I’ll wait):

Elyn Saks Interview – Part 1 of 2

Elyn Saks

 

 

The autism community is still waiting for its Elyn Saks — someone who will stand up and say “Mental Illness is part of who I am, but that does not make me less of a person, or less of an advocate for persons with ASD.” In fact, the autism community is still ambivalent about acknowledging the clinical and genetic continuum that joins ASD and mental illness. (We have blogged on this before, here When is “co-morbidity” no longer “co-morbidity”? and here Out and About.) So there is a long way to go.

 

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James Coplan, MD is an Internationally recognized clinician, author, and public speaker in the fields of early child development, early language development and autistic spectrum disorders. Stay connected, join Dr. Coplan on Facebook and Twitter.

 

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