For the past decade, a lot of energy has been put into reducing stigma around mental health disorders and treatment. Certainly, we don’t want stigma or shame to get in the way of identifying mental health disorders like clinical depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. When a diagnosis is present and accurate, we can then provide folks with the most effective treatment in hopes of relieving the person of the mental health disorder.
The reality is: When there is a mental disorder present, something has gone wrong.
Some people see such a statement as stigmatizing or shaming, and… I would disagree. There’s no shame in things going wrong. Indeed, Christians would agree that there’s something wrong with all of us. Mental health disorders are just one variety of ways that things go wrong within humanity. We’re all in the same boat – mental health diagnosis or not.
Now, reducing stigma and shame is a valiant goal so long as we can continue to identify mental health disorders as disorders. In other words, disorders are problems that need resolution – not affirmation. Early on in my career, a client said that she felt like people were telling her that her problem was not a problem and that she’d feel better if she learned to accept it. She equated this experience to breaking a leg and people telling her she should just walk on it and learn to accept the broken leg.
Holding to the reality that a disorder is an indication that something has gone wrong leads us to take steps toward intervention. The work we’ve done to de-stigmatize mental unhealth seems to have communicated that disorders are normal. The cultural message seems to be that we should affirm, adjust to and live with disorders. Too often now, people hang onto their diagnosis for identity, purpose, belonging and other reasons. At Envision, our goal in identifying a mental or emotional disorder is to provide effective treatment and see folks get better. We hope you’ll join us to find resolution to your difficulties.
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