We have the right to offend, but when should we?

Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks Angela Gilchrist looks at how we think about those we see as ‘different’.

We can protest for our freedom but can we
also accept difference?
Photo: Claude Truong Ngoc 

The right to freedom of speech reached a watershed with the Je Suis Charlie march in Paris. Not only did it reveal double standards but it highlighted how easily liberty is talked about, yet how impossibly difficult to realise.

The sentiments were admirable, even moving. But as world leaders who have journalists locked up in their own countries marched under the Je Suis Charlie banner along with well-known Western leaders, some began to worry about the trickier, more complex aspects to this debate.

Does the legal right to offend others, make it desirable, and if so, when? If you’re a person who belongs to a marginalised, often discriminated against group,  such as those with disabilities, LGBT people or those who happen to be religious, you’ll know how it feels to have your particular ‘issue’ lampooned. It’s painful, and we become defensive. What many fail to understand though, is how this all too human foible remains (as indeed it must) separate to the right of free speech.

We need brave people to speak out

Angela Gilchrist on the launch of ‘Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia’ , a new report from the British Psychological Society

This is a critical moment in mental health history: never have so many decision makers wanted things to change. That’s according to the National Clinical Director for Mental Health, Dr Geraldine Strathdee, speaking last week at the launch of ‘Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia', a report from the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology.

The event, described by many as 'ground-breaking and momentous', was remarkable in that it brought together numerous and disparate voices in the mental health community including psychiatrists, psychologists, policy makers, third sector workers and people with lived experience of psychosis. Among the guests were the Shadow Minister for Public Health and Mental Health, Luciana Berger; and the founder and principal theorist for the Hearing Voices Movement, Professor Marius Romme.

Robin Williams, depression and the complex causes of suicide

While many people who kill themselves have been experiencing the extreme distress we might think of as depression, that’s not always the case and is rarely the whole explanation. 

This article originally appeared on the Guardian Science Website on the 18th of August 2014 and is reproduced here with permission.

Anne Cooke, Angela Gilchrist and John McGowan

Photo: Eva Rinaldi

As the tributes to the actor and comedian Robin Williams continue, so too do the arguments over the meaning of his death. Suicide is a profound act that touches many, and it would be surprising if it didn’t raise strong feelings. On the one hand we have Shep Smith of Fox News calling Williams a “coward” (he has since apologised). On the other we have a range of articles defending the star, usually along the lines of “don’t blame the guy – he had a mental illness.”

Most of the coverage has encouraged us to see his anguish as a symptom of a sickness as real and biologically based as measles or a broken leg. Just like those afflictions, we’re told, depression can strike anyone out of the blue. A piece by Guardian science blogger Dean Burnett offered a variation on this theme, asserting that depression is an illness and attacking any suggestion that suicidal acts might involve anything but desperation and a wish to escape. While we’re sure that the piece was written with the intention of defending someone in pain, we worry that it contains ways of thinking about mental health that oversimplify complex issues and can be unhelpful.

Madiba's magic

 Following the death of Nelson Mandela Angela Gilchrist reflects on her time as a young journalist in South Africa and the process of national reconciliation.

Soweto 1976. A long road back.
Photo: Soundprint Media

South Africa had reached one of its most defining moments in history, the 1976 Soweto Uprising. Before then I hadn’t taken much notice of the name Mandela. I had fallen into journalism as a skinny 19-year-old who still had orthodontic bands on her teeth and little knowledge of the world. I had lived in the safety of the 'white' suburbs on the eastern edge of Johannesburg. But in Soweto I saw violence and brutality that I can never forget and it was then that my political consciousness began to sharpen.

The African National Congress was banned and scores were detained without charge or trial. I didn't then even know what Mandela looked like as no images were available. He was spoken about in whispers and disparaged as a 'communist terrorist'. (Communism included any notion of racial equality). It wasn't possible to have access to his thoughts without going across borders. South Africa was without television until just five months before Soweto erupted. And once it had arrived, one of its main functions was to sell apartheid as a necessary tool for the salvation of the country. Mandela was described as an agitator and someone whose detention was necessary for our safety. He remained faceless, dangerous and disparaged.

South Africans thus had access to a limited number of opinions, debate was restricted, and views became deeply polarised. When conversation did take place about the matters of the day, it was often ill-informed and based on hearsay or propaganda. Being young, female and curious about the country's political peculiarities, represented a tricky set of challenges. People, men usually, would tell me that I was too young to understand or that I ought not to be bothering my pretty head about such things. My open support of racial equality meant that I was sometimes shunned and branded as a communist.

Wounded healer? A qualification without ceremony

Angela Gilchrist

Do professionals always have to wear a mask?
Image: kurogami.com

I innocently posted an item on Twitter the other day about Marsha Linehan, one of the world’s best known clinical psychologists and the creator of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). Linehan caused a stir a little over two years ago when she announced that she, like so many of the people she has tried to help, had suffered from the experiences labelled as 'borderline personality disorder' (BPD). Admittedly, Twitter is a volatile medium in which people say many things free of the restraints that a less anonymous conversation might impose. But, even so, I was unprepared for the vitriol with which my tweet was greeted.

Service-users responded immediately and their views were unequivocal.

'It only took her 30 years to come out!' complained one, while another said that surely she could have helped more if she had revealed her own history of mental illness sooner. An attack followed on the merits of DBT, created by Linehan with the aid of insights provided by her own struggle. 

It's Brave but is it Helpful?

Angela Gilchrist

Fighting Stigma or Frightening Stuff?
Photo: Christian Payne

When a celebrity like Stephen Fry can publicly admit that he's recently attempted suicide and others like Catherine Zeta-Jones announce they're checking into a clinic for maintenance of a bipolar disorder, it would be tempting to believe that we've reached a new point in the acceptance of mental illness.

Certainly, people are more open than they have ever been about mental distress. Celebrity accounts fill the tabloids and the internet abounds with stories from those either in the midst of recovery or resigned to a lifetime of psychiatric input. Films have leading characters with bipolar, MP's have discussed their mental health woes, and we’ve made it illegal to discriminate on mental health grounds. These are signs that we're beginning to understand mental ill-health as just another form of distress. Given all this evidence, you could be forgiven for thinking that the stigma of mental illness is a thing of the past. The reality though, sometimes seems very different.