Harmful Language and Mental Illness: A Unique Perspective

Protecting Me From 'Crazy'

Not too long ago I read that the term crazy should not be used because it may traumatize people living with mental illness and perpetuate stigma. Shortly thereafter someone asked me; As a person living with a mental illness what do you think about the word crazy? I had no thoughts or emotions. Absolutely nothing came to mind. Nothing.

After these two things happened close together, I started to think about the word ‘crazy’. Does it have a harmful effect on people with a mental illness? Soon, I was thinking about all the ways ‘crazy’ is used. Once I started thinking about it, I began to notice when people said it. I realized that I heard it a lot. Sometimes seven times a day. Sometimes twenty times a day. I heard it in personal conversations. I heard it at grocery store. I heard it on TV and the radio. And I heard it in songs on my play list. ‘Crazy’ was everywhere.

I had never been offended or traumatized by the word. Should I be? I began to ask people attending NAMI Connections support groups if they were offended when they heard it. I talked to seventy-three people. To a person they said no. Some said, no, but somebody else might be. In all my conversations, I never found that somebody else.

I realized that now I was offended. Not by hearing the word crazy, but by the people who thought that those of us with a mental illness are so weak, vulnerable, and emotionally unstable that we need protection from the word.

People who are deciding that we need protection from ‘crazy’ aren’t people who live with a mental illness. They are people in positions of power who think that we need protecting. Some are social workers. Some are administrators in mental health social service organizations, and some are academics. But the thing they all have in common is thinking that they are superior. They think that they know what’s best for us and society. They treat us like children. They infantilize us. They see us as less than. How arrogant and condescending.  

I thought about the impact that the word crazy has on the perpetuation of the stigma around mental illness. I realized that it has no effect until people are told it is harmful language. The clear message to the broader population is that we mentally ill are weak, vulnerable, easily traumatized, and that we need to be protected. I realized that eliminating ‘crazy’ from the language to reduce stigma has the exact opposite effect.

Those of us with a mental illness are not weak. We are strong. We have faced challenges that most people never will. We have lived through our dark days and lost years and come out the other side. We are resilient. We are capable. We are not easily traumatized. We don’t need taken care of. We are not less than. We certainly don’t need to be protected from ‘crazy’. Thinking we do is the epitome of ableism.