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Why We Need to Stop Casually Throwing Around Words Like 'Bipolar' or 'OCD' (www.vice.com)

 

"Why would you say you're experiencing overwhelming and disabling anxiety, feeling like you're being choked to death or having a heart attack, wanting to collapse under the desk, when you're not?"

"Dr. Zsofia Demjen is a linguist who studies the intersections of language, mind, and health. She explained why this trend matters. "Using bipolar or schizo or essentially technical words to describe mundane or everyday experiences means the original technical meaning of the term becomes diluted and it becomes more strongly associated with these simpler or more fleeting experiences. It normalizes illness. The potential problem is that 'I'm depressed' now means 'I'm sad.' Then how does someone who actually has depression describe his or her illness or how he or she feels? How can people differentiate the much more complex, much more intense thing they have from this thing everyone always claims ownership of?""

"You'd never use a physical illness like cancer as a negative throwaway term to mean lazy or weak. However, because mental illness is invisible to most, it enables this slip of language to happen. It's so easy to conflate anything with mental health—with feelings and emotions—because those are also "in your head.""

"It's not about taking over language and deciding who can say what. It's about having a word to express to people who don't understand what is affecting us. Many find being diagnosed and given a term for their illness empowering; they can go online and research their illness, the science, and the facts. They can hang onto that word when they're having a bad patch. Within the mental health community, the word has immense power. Satiating these words will eventually make them meaningless to everyone."

To read Hannah Ewens' full article, click: https://www.vice.com/en_us/art...p-saying-were-mental

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