Stop the stigma

Dear editor:
Recently, my Grade 12 sociology students received curriculum developed in partnership with the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Ministry of Education.
The project is called TAMI and the students are immersed in the issues surrounding mental illness, the stigma, the myths, and the reality of the major illnesses.
The curriculum concludes with a panel of mental health consumers openly answering students’ questions about mental illness in the context of their own personal experiences.
These are very brave people—willing to reach out to our next generation of adults so that when mental illness does strike someone they know or themselves, they are able to reach out for help.
Families affected by mental illness know well enough that the symptoms can be devastating to the patient, as well as the loved ones.
Yet published in the “Fort Frances Today” is a list of “Christmas Carols from the Psychiatrist’s Office.” I can only assume its purpose is to provide a good laugh at the expense of those who live with mental illness!
Once again I find myself asking why not cancer? Why not arthritis? Why not heart and stroke disease? Why is it that the media and the general public target only mental illness as the brunt of e-mail jokes, casual comments, and published humour.
Even my 10-year-old daughter was very aware of the “meanness” implied by each joke.
We talk and talk and talk about bullying (i.e., ridicule, exclusion, cyber-bullying, the list goes on). We talk about the devastating effects of bullying.
I think it is time that the adults stop their bullying.
There are thousands of human faces for each illness—all have names, all have families, but not all make it.
My Christmas wish is for each one of us is to live in dignity. What is yours?
Signed,
Willa Kunkel
Fort Frances, Ont.