I've been watching The Last Leg and they have been talking a lot about the ISIS attacks. I try to refrain from talking a lot about ISIS because they do terrify me and I get paranoid that even talking about them puts me in a vulnerable position. The Last Leg presenters were talking about all the shootings and talking about how some of it is actually down to a man who was mentally unwell. This is wear I begin to become very protective because I panic that yet again the media are blaming mental illness for mass murder and reiterating the stereotype that all people with mental health issues are "crazy" and "uncontrollable.
Josh Widdicome then asked "Isn't any person who kills hundreds of people mentally unwell". And in some cases yes, mental health issues have been blamed for the murders of innocent people. With everything that causes significant damage the people are rigorously tested for mental health issues. Because mental health issues are always the first thing to be blamed for any wrong that has happened. I hate that. I hate that we live in a society where if someone went and killed another human the first thing they do is check for mental health issues, like it is always the fault of a mental health issue.
Not all people with a mental health issue are "crazy" or would go out and kill random innocent people and that's a message that I try so hard to convey in my blog posts. I don't want people to instantly judge me because of my illness because of the media's representation of all of the illnesses that I have. It's difficult sometimes to continue that fight because it begins to feel like I am fighting a loosing battle, that one day the media will win. I'm scared that our world is going to go back to how it used to be and I will be treated like others with mental health issues but being tested and and tortured because of my illness.
I am not going to be standing up for ISIS and their choices because I think they are extremely wrong, but I don't think they're behavior is because they are "mentally unwell". ISIS are a religious group, everything they are doing is what they believe to be right because their religion says so. That doesn't make what they are doing right in the slightest, but I also think that mental health issues should be the one to get the blame for what they are doing. Although people would say they have something wrong with them to do what they are doing, I really think they are acting with religious intent, yes it might be terrible and disgusting but this is what they believe to be the "right thing".
It's sad that we live in a society where the finger is constantly pointed to mental health issues because it continues to add to the stigma of the illnesses that I live with. It might be easy to make a throw away comment about my issues when you don't understand what living with a mental illness is actually like but I wish that the media would stop continuing to portray people with mental health issues in a bad light and maybe start working towards helping fight the stigma too. A girl can only dream.
Rebecca
xxx
