I've spent a lifetime with the mentally ill, as well as with mental health care workers. My aunt works with mentally ill adults, and did a lot to educate me after I left home.

Anyway, I began to find myself getting offended when I heard stigmatizing labels regarding a person's mental health... i.e. crazy, messed up, psychotic...

I often times find it to be ignorant, intolerant, and/or overly judgmental, certainly insensitive. In bad situations I have used the term crazy to describe someone behaving destructively in my life, out of frustration and for lack of a more astute word. I suppose I've been somewhat guilty of this myself.

Perhaps one day these terms will fall into the same league as certain profane words related to race and sexual orientation, which I will not repeat on this forum. It would be wonderful if the public and school children were educated more on mental health and mental illness. May be the only way to combat the stigma.

Does anyone else get offended by this? Have people labeled you this way? Looking for anyone to share opinion and experience...

Do you think though that its not acceptable that some people are just crazy? Being they don't have to have a specific disorder attached to them, they are just outright crazy! Psychotic is a disorder... it is a correct word to call a person across a range of disorders actually. Crazy actually still holds some substance as its own classification when all else is ruled out.

I agree that it may be rude to call someone this, though these are more generic terms I guess society use to associate a disorder or mental health issue. Society is not a walking DSM text book, and why would they be when ignorance is a far better option for most.

Just wanted to add that into the equation of thought.... not for right or wrong, just my two cents into what I believe is going to be quite a good topic of experience.

I just don't care. People are people, myself included. I have PTSD, sometimes I have acted crazy. Been out of control with behavior. I acted the part and probably deserved whatever others said.

My neighbor is Paranoid delusional schizophrenic, with obsessive compulsive disorder, on no meds and under no ones care. She is crazy!!!!! Sorry if it offends you but she is.....

Personally I am sick of this whole politically correct bullshit that is happening lately. I for one call it like it is. I don't dance around things. Crazy is crazy in my book and that includes me if I act the part.

I've spent my careen working in psychiatry and so I go some firm beliefs along those lines.

Stigmatization in the US is extremely severe. And the us citizen in general I found extremely vulnerable to labels of crazy and insane. I consider it an extremely and profoundly rude and destructive thing to label and refer to people with mental disorders this way.

It is, at least for the hundreds of patients I've treated extremely tough on them to be stigmatized by the mental health community. Self-esteem just plummets. Treatment is different, people feel minimized, loose power. . . it is really bad.

It's so bad that in groups I used to lead, I'd recommend people not tell anyone they had a diagnosis. If they lost work being in the hospital they told the boss they were in the hospital, NOT that they were on psychiatry. It would absolutely ruin their career. I told them to tell no one, unless they had absolute confidence in the even handedness of them. That's how bad it is in the usofa.

I don't know about other countries. But in the US it is the absolute worst case to get a psychiatric diagnosis. You get almost no respect from anyone.

I cannot believe that anyone on this forum would use the label crazy or psychotic to label someone if they knew what absolute devastation it most probably would cause that person.

PS as a former professional in the field, with all due respect to others opinions, "crazy" as a label has absolutely no credibility as a description in psychiatry. Perhaps, to a layman, crazy means something, but as to accuracy of a descriptive it says nothing except to the person who uses it. It adds nothing except perhaps in the sense that giving a label to something makes us think we know something about it although we don't. Just my opinion, eh.

The term "crazy" has and hasn't bothered me at certain times in my life. It seems the term is loosely thrown around because it so general. Like Anthony said, people don't carry around the DSM textbook and clinically diagnose people in a matter of minutes because they are acting erratically, in that person's opinion.

What I do notice is an intolerance towards those who suffer from behavioral or mental disorders because the behaviors that those people exhibit seem alien to people who live relatively normal lives. Mostly, I think it is a lack of compassion and unwillingness to accept that a behavoiral or mental disorder can be just as debilitating as cancer or diabetes or any number of physically disabling diseases. The feeling that someone who is mentally ill is "weak" pervades the American psyche. It is somehow our fault that we have symptoms and at times, can not overcome them.

This conversation brings back memories of Virginia Tech. Those kids called Cho "weird", lacking any compassion towards the fact that he might be mentally ill - and he was, and he ended up killing people.

Best,
Rachel

Well, giving up the use of the word crazy would certainly put an end to my breaking into one of my favourite songs, none other that Patsy Cline's 'Crazy'

On a more serious note, I think we will never eradicate words like this, but we can at least try to label behaviours and not people as 'crazy.' Then again, I would certainly hope for a level of sensitivity and respect toward others that would make such labelling, in the face of actual or even possible mental illness, just unthinkable.

Personally, I have felt far more stigmatized and rejected (i.e. written off) by professionals' use of actual diagnoses. Having been mislabelled as having Borderline Personality Disorder on more than one occasion, I am well acquainted with the sound of the doors to all future serious interest or offers of help slamming shut in my face.

Then again, I myself have been known to say "well, then I just went completely crazy", when trying to explain my at the time incomprehensible decompensation, when PTSD finally burst through all my defenses.

dlross

I would like to clarify my previous post. Just because I use the term crazy with my neighbor, here on the forum, dosen't mean that I would say it to her.

I do have compassion, and treat her with respect and dignity. I would never say anything to her face. But I will admit I walk away, roll my eyes and think to myself, she's nuts.

Her behavior, and actions are so far removed from "Normal" that it would be hard to think any differently.

So you can call me a hypocrite, but at least I am a honest one. Yes I do use the term crazy.

I guess I forgot to say that I use the term "crazy" A LOT. I use to describe others and myself.

She Cat, I'm a total hypocrite, too.

Best,
Rachel

In the past, I have been most guilty of stigmatizing myself. I used to think those labels meant I was weak, defective, at fault, etc. Recently, I have not done this to myself. Yet I have been sensitive and on guard with people who might confirm these distortions. I've been careful and embarrassed to share my difficulties with my friends and co-workers. I think it is wise to be careful, but I shouldn't be embarrassed.

With my therapist, I even told her I feel stigmatized by the mental health profession. I thought her perceptions and expectations seem limited by my current diagnosis and previous history. I challenged her to step outside of her training and experience to a new experience- an experience of recovery beyond merely coping and managing the symptoms. Being heard and understood, I guess was an acknowledgement. However, being asked to ask her what she thinks before I assume I know, I was irritated. Although a fair request, there seemed to be no sense of shared responsibilty. Was it not possible the doc contributed in any way? It's aggravating to me that once I step into that office, my observations and interpretations become less valid, pathological, cognitive distortions.

It is what it is. What can I do about it? I can present to others a new experience which opens their minds. I can be a positive example which changes the negative associations given to a label. However, I can't do this until rid myself of those negative associations.

I mostly get offended when these labels are applied to people who do not have a severe diagnosable mental illness. Also when person has a mental illness that does not come anywhere close to the diagnosis of psychotic... the person is high functioning and rational.

For example, calling someone psychotic simply because you don't understand their differences, despite the absence of any real mental health issues. There are two people close to me who have been clinically diagnosed as psychotic, and I have personally witnessed why. Calling a healthy individual by the same term is ignorant and slanderous at the least.

Another example; calling someone messed up because they smile at times when you don't think a person should be smiling. Or calling them messed up because their father was absent or died when they were young. Or even in the case when a person actually does have a mental illness instigated by childhood events (such as PTSD), it still bothers me. To me, to label someone messed up is to label them as 'less than fully human.' I find it to be invalidating and derogatory.

Or how about calling someone crazy because they are more daring and show less concern for their own well being than is typical, for example people into high risk sports. Or because they have strange beliefs and opinions that you don't find to be valid. I agree with the above posts, the term crazy has no credibility with me. I find the term to be more of a reflection on the person using it than a reflection on the person it is meant to describe.

And no, most people don't walk around with a working knowledge of mental illness and a DSM in their pocket. This is exactly why they shouldn't diagnose people and label them as mentally ill!!!