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. 

We’re (not) coming out… Not today, anyway

Salomons Service User and Carer Coordinator, Laura Lea considers why admitting to mental health problems may be such a taboo for mental health professionals.

McGowan, John (john.mcgowan@canterbury.ac.uk)

Lots of attention since we tweeted it actually. Several retweets, favourites etc. Be interested to se if that shows up in the figures from the journal’s website.

Fri 26/04

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.