Salomons Service User and
Carer Coordinator, Laura Lea considers why admitting to mental health problems may
be such a taboo for mental health professionals.
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| Victims of care crisis? Or psycho killers? Who'd want to come out. |
'We're comin’ out… out on the streets’ sang the late Lou Reed.
That was in 1972 and now feels part of a story where people having the courage
to be honest led to a sea change in attitudes to sexuality. In 2013 it still
rarely feels safe to tell people I've had mental health problems. Even before
that notorious Sun front page. I'm not sure what I think will happen if I
declare myself. Perhaps it’s a belief that people will wonder whether it’s me
or the mental illness talking. Too much emotion might be taken as a sign that I
am not entirely in charge of myself. Too calm and my responses could seem
blunted. Either way I don’t want people to think that my brain is out of order.
After all there’s plenty of evidence to suggest admissions of mental health
problems provoke pejorative associations and might not be the best thing for my
future employment prospects.
In my current
career though (someone whose current job actually requires experience of being a mental health service user) I'm more
out than I've ever been. While it’s not always easy, I hope I’m at least a small
part of a bigger change, and that coming out can be as powerful an act in mental health as it has been in sexual
identity. I often wonder though how much more difficult is it to declare you
have a mental health condition if you actually work in the business? Certainly a
recent study of psychiatrists suggests this is the case. What if you go from being
someone who is known as sane, even a ‘sanity consultant’, to someone touched by madness? The study
suggests that maintaining your secret is the only answer. Doctors need to hide
their status as patients.
