At the Intersection of Mental Illness and the Margins

I have recently come to the realization that I am, indeed, mentally ill – but furthermore, that it is okay.

I often write, make art, converse, etc. about my struggles with anxiety, with depression, with OCD, and other related symptoms.  However, I have never been comfortable with the label “mentally ill.”  Mental illness honestly has a bad rep.  It is all-too-often pathologized, demonized, and marginalized in society.  It is seen as something to be gotten rid of, and those of us who have these experiences have our very lives invalidated.  We are seen as “suffering”, through the narrative of “poor us” without considering the fact that maybe we can manage ourselves, maybe we can seek the treatment that we actually need rather than the treatment that society wants us to receive, and maybe we can be in charge of our own self-determination.  Mental illness, like all other forms of disability, is not equivalent to death.  Our lives are still valid, our experiences are still valid, and we have voices to call our own.

Maybe what society sees as “suffering” actually works for us.  Does that excuse the extreme, felonious behavior that a small percentage of us end up committing?  Of course not.  But remember, what society does to us, ingrains in us, and the way that most people marginalize, criminalize, and pathologize our behavior that’s perfectly normative to our being is, to say the least, even more harmful to our mental health than simply leaving us alone.  When society is taught to fear our very being, to hate who we are, and to seek treatment simply so we can be more respectable and acceptable to broader society, the mental health of the mentally ill suffers even more.  While ableism has become “better” in a sense, from issues of police brutality to incarceration and institutionalization, the state of mentally ill citizens remains dire.  We remain psychologically and institutionally wards of the state.  Our existence is seen as a burden to broader society and, in many ways, governments are encouraged to lock us up rather than deal with us in ways that will help us become contributing citizens in the ways that we can.  Our experiences are not even considered until a mass shooting has occurred or we commit suicide, we must harm others or ourselves before we are even visible, otherwise, we remain invisible in the context of society.

What seems to be lost in conversations about mental illness are mentally ill voices ourselves.  Everyone is quick to judge a white mass-shooter as “mentally ill” despite extenuating circumstances that often include bigotry and hatred rather than actual instances of mental illness.  And notice that, after any such mass-shooting/act of terror, news outlets are filled with pundits who automatically blame mental illness and encourage policies to further marginalize the mentally ill and disable people in general, likely because mentally ill people remain under an accepted sense of paternalism disguised as the “social good”.  As a result, actual mentally ill people are not even considered relevant in the conversation even though everything from our perception of self to acceptance in society continue to decline.  It’s almost as if society would rather have us commit suicide, self-harm, etc. because, while tragic, it is better than the perceived capacity of “every” mentally ill person to commit an act of terror.  It can be argued that for any psychological/mental disability in general, this is also the case (because too many people assume that mental illness and mental disability are one in the same instead of the reality that mental illness is just one form of mental disability).  This poses a huge problem for society.  Many great artists, inventors, and other creators of cultural capital attribute their work with neurodivergence, the non-normative train of thought that is present in anyone who is mentally disabled.  Yet, when society continues to enforce neuronormativity, the next generation of mentally ill people are at risk.  We will never be able to achieve our potential on our own without societal support for our endeavors.  We can literally work as hard as we want but, at the end of the day, the pathology, marginalization and discrimination we are subjected to simply because of our existence will take a toll on our mental health in a way that further adversely affects our quality of life.

And how about those of us who are further marginalized?

It is hard enough for the typical mentally ill cis, heterosexual, white male to deal with mental illness and, by no means do I want to invalidate what they go through, but what about those of us who have other societal barriers to overcome?

When your very existence, based on one characteristic, is automatically discarded into ideas of sameness or pathology, your mental health is already at-risk.  But when you are subjected to multiple levels of marginalization (e.g. gay and mentally ill, brown and trans, etc.) you also face, at the least, double the level of discrimination – although it is more likely that you will experience discrimination equivalent to the compounded face value plus the high interest rates society puts on you for being multiply marginalized (mostly in the form of those pesky microaggressions).

As a queer/gay, Brown/Pinoy, disabled (autistic, ADHD, and OCD) person, my queer, Brown, disabled existence already subject me to multiple levels of marginalization and consciousness that demands a worldview that differentiates me from most.  However, when you compound that with mental illness, I obviously face several more challenges than I would with just one of these already marginalized characteristics.