There's a new trend emerging here in Denmark. The politically correct term for people in emotional distress is no longer "mentally ill" (psykisk syg) or "insane" (sindssyg - yup, both the "experts" and the media have a preference for this truly value neutral term, especially when it comes to "the schizophrenics"), it is "mentally vulnerable". Beautiful, huh? Like renaming the house slave as housekeeper, or lobotomy as psycho-surgery... Everybody of course just loooves this new term. It sounds so empathetic, so loving and caring, doesn't it?
One of those who are at the leading edge concerning this linguistic revolution is former Danish prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who recently launched one more amazing website (check out the vid - and cry; no need to speak Danish btw, his facial expression says it all) for, yeah, "mentally vulnerable" people and their relatives.
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, whose daughter suffered from "depression", and eventually felt so respectfully listened to, also by her father, that she couldn't bear it anymore - certainly because of the "illness" - and ended her life, now wants to compensate for this tragic loss by publicly pleading the "mentally vulnerables' " cause. As we all know, these, uhm, people don't really have a voice of their own (that's probably why Poul Nyrup didn't hear the least, although his daughter screamed and shouted right into his ears), so they need every NAMI-parent available to speak for them.
"Schizophrenia is a persistent and serious mental illness," it reads on Poul Nyrup's brand new website. Among a whole bunch of other lies. It seems, Poul Nyrup is in dire need of a Truth Injection. Maybe I'll take pity on him and e-mail him one, one of these days. Being no more "mentally vulnerable" than anybody else, and thus able to speak for myself. But frankly I fear, Poul Nyrup's condition is rather persistent and serious, with treatment-resistant denial being one of the core symptoms.
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4 comments:
"Schizophrenia is a persistent and serious mental illness"
Yes, the more they say it is, the more many people will think it is so. I guess he took his script from NAMI.
Rossa: "...the more they say it is, the more many people will think it is so."
Yes. Especially when someone like Poul Nyrup, who is a celeb in this country, says it is. The media are all over his engagement for the "mentally vulnerable". If the "mentally vulnerable" themselves only got half of the (prime) time on TV and elsewhere he's given, that would border to a real revolution.
You're pretty feisty. How about taking him on?
Rossa: That's what I thought I might do. His website has a section for "mentally vulnerable" people to tell about their experiences with their "mental vulnerability" and the system. I certainly will post to that section. A more direct approach, like an e-mail for instance - I don't know. Maybe. But I've written to people, journalists, psych-staff, whoever, I don't know how many times before. And although I'm a lot less "rough" when I address people personally than I am in this piece, I usually don't get as much as one word in reply. Of course not, you might say, because what could they write in reply to an ever so polite request to have a look at the actual facts, and explain their expressed viewpoints in the light of these, when their personal, political, social, etc. comfort depends on believing in and promoting the mainstream viewpoint? Most of these people know very well that their viewpoints can't stand up to a closer investigation that compares them to the actual facts. So they do whatever they can to entirely avoid the comparison.
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