Call me crazy

As a former mental patient, I find being asked to ‘embrace my diagnosis’ far more offensive than words like ‘bonkers’

Mentally ill people can be troublesome but at least the rest of the population does not have to think about them much. The system is effective in that respect. No one need know, for example, that 10 per cent of adults in Scotland are on antidepressants. The disturbed do not spread their disturbance.

Whenever the subject of mental health surfaces in the media, progress is reported, unless there’s been a murder. While ‘bipolar’ has become a fashionable term to describe one’s own interesting self, and celebrities lay claim to mental difficulties without fearing loss of face or income, the main thrust of the psychiatric profession’s publicity wing is the fight against ‘stigma’. The message is that the psychiatrists understand the predicaments — bipolar affective disorder, schizophrenia and so on — and are treating them correctly.