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Posted By pkomarek On 12/22/06 05:41 AM
One of NAMI's flaws is its sometime fixation on whether a person has an illness or instead has a family member with an illness. This is stigmatizing in a very pernicious way because it says we at NAMI can make choices based on a person's medical condition when no one else can.
To be truly inclusive, NAMI needs to declare this issue "out of bounds." We must all work to eliminate these factions, not rename them.
For the most part, distinctions based on minority group membership are disappearing from civil discourse. We don't use terms like White fire fighter, African-American engineer, or Catholic customer service representative very often. It's not relevant. In civil discourse, we have simply moved beyond this.
NAMI should move beyond this too. We are all community members. We have the education we have, the challenges we individually face, the talents we have individually to contribute. We each have a unique story based on personal experience and the experience of the persons in our lives.
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Suggestion Box > The term "consumer"I've tried to follow my own advice in my book Defying Mental Illness.
The term "consumer"
Posted By pkomarek On 12/11/06 04:11 PM
After many years working with people with disabilities both within and outside the NAMI community, I firmly believe that, for the most part, people should give up trying to invent or embrace euphemisms for conditions that are stigmatizing.
Consumer has come to be as stigmatizing as crazy or patient or mental. Whatever new word comes into practice will become stigmatizing over time.
For people who want to organize on the basis of their shared condition, I suggest using the same sort of labels that persons free of medical problems use. These include "citizen" or "neighborhood study group" or "book club."
The more radical groups of persons with disabilities push the stigmatizing labels back at the "normals" - These are the groups that proclaim themselves cripples or crazy or mad. This is a matter of preference.
So let's support the anti-stigma work, but let's also refuse to accept stigmatizing labels imposed by others or by ourselves.
Let's try these on for size: Persons seeking treatment Persons in recovery Persons with an illness Persons receiving treatment Community member Friend
--pk---
