Re: CHAT: Profile of a Conlanger

>===== Original Message From Constructed Languages List (Eli)
>Also, an aside as regards mental illness: My only official diagnosis is
>dysthemia, I believe (the shrinks have not been particularly forthcoming
>with information in my case).  I also have a great many of the symptoms of
>OCD.  I've been twice hospitalized and tried Zoloft.  It certainly does
>seem as if the incidence of mental illness is unusually high on this list,
>which makes me even more inclined to think that "mental illness" is simply
>societally legitimized prejudice.
More complex an issue than I'd like to get into, but let me just say for the
record that from my POV, it would be an error on one side to ignore the degree
to which the label "mental illness" is used as a weapon of societal prejudice,
and an error on the other side to write off the whole concept of "mental
illness" as an ideological fabrication.

I have a number of friends with mental illnesses worse (so it sounds) than
anything anyone's mentioned having here, and at least in the U.S., the biggest
problem seems to be, not people unfairly pathologizing them, but unfairly
refusing to acknowledge that they are suffering from something which is real,
debilitating, and not their fault -- and not something they can just shake off
or "cheer up" from or whatever.

Ed

--
Ed Heil * edheil@atdot.org
      "When you get your Ph. D.
      How happy you will be
      When you get a job at Wendy's
      And are honored with 'Employee of the Month.'"
       -- Bare Naked Ladies, "Never Is Enough"