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Labels, for better or worse

© Ian Chovil

I was talking to a reporter the other day and he referred to people with schizophrenia as having "mental health issues". It is the new politically correct term for people with mental illness, although the whole point of the phrase is that you are not saying they have a mental illness, you are saying they have a "mental health issue". It is a real travesty to refer to people seriously disabled by an incurable brain disease, as having a "mental health issue". The phrase trivializes life threatening diseases like schizophrenia. It implies that schizophrenia is roughly equivalent to a bad hair day.

Over the years I've seen people with schizophrenia called a number of things. I remember a police officer referring to a suspect as a schizo. I also shorten descriptions. It's called "instagrat", instant gratification for those who don't believe in it. Who has the time to say the whole phrase when a couple of syllables will suffice? I have no objection to being called a schizophrenic per se, but I am more then just my illness, and I prefer to known as a person with schizophrenia. That is an awkward mouthful though, which slows down the whole conversation. The "Schizophrenia Society of Ontario" used to be called the "Friends of Schizophrenics". Not that anyone actually says the whole phrases. It was commonly shortened to "Friends" and now it's the "SSO".

The same issue, (I love that word issue, you can use it anywhere), came up with respect to case management, the staff of a mental health agency who visit people with a long term mental illness on a regular basis in the community. I don't know who actually coined the term case management, but everyone is familiar with the term now, even if they think it is politically incorrect. It was argued that people with mental health issues were not cases and they didn't need management. It was funny to watch the local CMHA in Guelph struggle to find a politically correct term to describe these employees. I think they have settled on "community support worker", but they are the only ones using the term. Their customers, clients, patients, cases, typically refer to their "worker" or "case manager".

In the hospital you refer to customers as patients and a survey at the Homewood Health Centre here in Guelph confirmed that as the first choice by the people admitted to the hospital. Clients seems to be the fashionable word for the customers of case managers, but you can expect that a more politically correct word will be handed down as gospel from some bureaucracy, like the word "consumer survivor".

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