Stone Cold Sane

CW: Sanism, recent news cycle, mention of violence

It’s been nearly a week and I have intentionally held my horses and my tongue.

The news cycle has generated a flurry of hot takes on the horrific events at a Sydney shopping centre last weekend. It stumbled many times in its race for the truth and now appears to have moved on to fresher fodder. 

This week included a first for me. I have wished for a bipolar disorder flare up severe enough to render me unaware of the above-mentioned news cycle.  I have craved the security of being in hospital. Usually when I long for the hospital, I am too unwell to be at home.

Right now? I am stone cold sane.

I imagine anyone with a pulse, access to the news, and a shred of empathy has been devastated by the deaths, injuries and trauma that stained last Saturday afternoon. Me too.

I’ve also wished I could find comfort in plunging my head into the sand. However, for now, I am well enough to find that prospect more unbearable than having word projectiles launched at me.

It is easy for me to sink into the comfortable feather bed of my friends, family, and acquaintances who are supportive, who don’t other me, who see all of me. It is easy to feel complacent, to believe that yes things are getting better out there, that we are reducing stigma surrounding mental illness. But things are not getting better when psychosis is in the picture.

The minute the media spewed out the words ‘mental health issues’ and ‘schizophrenia’ in relation to the knife attacks, I braced myself for what was to come. And it came alright. Those words lit a match to the petrol-soaked kindling held by people paddling around in all of the news outlet and social media comments sections.

If you haven’t lived with what I have, you might think – ‘Don’t read the comments. They are rubbish.’

Yes. But they are also a barometer and thermometer. And if you are someone who walks through the world with a severe mental illness, knowing the temperature and pressure of your surroundings matters.

We all come at the comments sections from the launch pads of our life experience.

As someone who has lived experience of postnatal psychosis and lives with well managed bipolar disorder, here is a snapshot of where I come from:

My experiences of psychosis have been the most terrifying of my life. I have dry retched and screamed with fear in the middle of them. And I have been safe and receiving the best care when they have happened.

I can’t imagine how I would have survived, let alone felt, if I had been experiencing this awful symptom, without care and treatment, while homeless, in the throes of addiction, or without the privilege I live with. If I were still alive, I don’t know what path I’d be on.

Over the last 17 years I have written and talked about not only my experiences but the failures of the public mental health system that are at least partially responsible for thousands of people having a poor quality of life when they don’t need to. I have pointed out many times that these failures almost always contribute when tragedy is the last stop on the derailed train of a poorly managed or unmanaged severe mental illness.

I have gone on ad nauseum about stigma surrounding severe mental illness, and the barrier it forms between people who need good care and their ability to access it.

And I am far from the only one writing and talking about it. Yet here we are.

Here I am feeling punched in the gut by two words that popped up frequently in the comments sections this week. One of my most hated pejoratives used to be ‘psycho bitch’. This week ‘psycho bitch’ was toppled by ‘these people’.

‘These people’ is less in your face than ‘psycho bitch’ – but more sinister. Where ‘psycho bitch’ is aggressive, ‘these people’ drips with contempt. ‘These people’ can be applied to any demographic the speaker or writer has a problem with. When I read ‘these people’. I picture the words tripping out of the mouths of people like Pauline Hanson, Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump,

To clarify, this week ‘these people’ in the comments sections was not a descriptor of knife wielding mass murderers. ‘These people’ referred to people – like me – who live with severe mental illness.

And the gist of the recommendations for ‘these people’ was that we should ‘be rounded up and locked away, or burn in hell’ and that we are like ‘vicious dogs who should not be let out in the community.’

While these sentiments frustrate and sicken me, I am not worried about me. I have an accurate diagnosis, access to good care, insight, and know how to look after myself.

I worry about people who are having a first or early experience with symptoms of a severe mental illness, who read this poison when they are alone, who soak it up and believe it to be the truth. This stigmatising language is enough to stop someone who is new to this, or entrenched in a stigma spiral, getting the help they need. This is particularly disheartening knowing that early interventions, especially when it comes to psychosis, give the best outcomes.

Most people who don’t get the help they need will never hurt anyone else, but they are at risk of having a poor quality of life, or not surviving their illness.

And anyone who includes stigmatising language in their vocabulary actively contributes to this cycle of suffering.

Last Saturday’s perpetrator may have been a misogynistic arsehole, capable of violence, regardless of his history of a mental illness.

Or his actions may have resulted wholly from unmanaged or poorly managed long term mental illness featuring psychosis and little help from the public mental health system.

Or it might have been a combination of both.

Most of us will never know.

So, do we need to?

I used to think so.

I used to think that the more detail in reports about a perpetrator’s mental ill health and areas where the mental health system had potentially failed them, the more the public would understand.

But I no longer believe there is any benefit in feeding a baying-for- blood public, click baity snippets or even more detailed information that they don’t appear to have the experience, compassion, or education to process rationally and fairly.

Consistent bad reporting on mental illness and its repercussions hurts vulnerable people. We may as well slide back into that dangerous fertiliser for stigma – silence.

You can report media coverage that stigmatises mental ill health at stigma watch here: https://www.sane.org/get-involved/advocacy/stigmawatch

For further reading about complex mental health conditions and stigma I strongly recommend journalist and author Elfy Scott’s book:

The one thing we’ve never spoken about: Exposing Our Untold Mental Health Crisis

You can find this book here: https://www.elfyscott.com/book

Elfy also wrote this excellent article for Crikey during the week, which I contributed a small quote to: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/04/17/bondi-junction-killer-schizophrenia-mental-health-reporting/

I have written several posts about media reporting and stigma surrounding complex mental ill health over the years. Here are some that you might like to check out:

Media-Made Monsters

Lies Of Omission: What You’re Never Told

Mind Your Language Katy Perry

Guilty Of Postnatal Psychosis

Mental Illness And Humour