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HereSince1628

(36,063 posts)
3. I'm not flaming I'm actually trying to be informative about something you need to understand
Sat Oct 27, 2012, 06:07 PM
Oct 2012

if you are going to participate in this safe haven.

You wrote shes a "RWNJ" you wrote you think she may be mentally ill

Calling a person with mental illness a nutjob is an example of the use of offensive inappropriate language toward the mentally ill.

Why is this language inappropriate?

Because it's a disparaging term applied to the mentally ill, one of the specified classes of people for whom this place was created.

You may never have given this much thought, but disparaging terms are intended to disgrace people. Disgrace means to discredit, to shame or to dishonor a person. A person marked with such discredit and shame is said to be stigmatized.


Stigma is used to disqualify a person from full social acceptance. And it is too commonly used against people with mental illness.

The mentally ill are stigmatized in our society, by that I mean that they are disqualified from full social acceptance. Sometimes that means a job, sometimes that means a promotion, in general it means being excluded from equal and fair treatment.

Worse, the fear of the consequences of the stigma of mental illness actually get in the way of the help mentally ill need. People are afraid to be identified as mentally ill because of the consequences that ID can bring to their careers and private lives. So they hide it, deny it, and suffer from it.

So the mentally ill, and people who care about people who are mentally ill are concerned about the application of disparaging language because the use of such a dreadful weapon against the mentally ill shouldn't be thoughtless.







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