Mad Pride

Newsweek tagline: “Why some men­tally ill patients are reject­ing their med­ica­tion and mak­ing the case for ‘mad pride.’”

From The Grow­ing Push for “Mad Pride”.

I am famil­iar with var­i­ous move­ments that cel­e­brate the pos­i­tive aspects of dif­fer­ence such as Dis­abil­ity Pride, Deaf Pride and Crip Pride, but only recently came across the idea of Mad Pride, a move­ment that cel­e­brates the pos­i­tive aspects of men­tal health diag­noses. The move­ment has been around for awhile, but a recent Newsweek arti­cle was the first I learned of it, at least that I remem­ber since I received my own men­tal health diagnoses.

There is much good that comes from accept­ing a men­tal health diag­noses and “com­ing out” to friends and fam­ily. Ben­e­fits include an increased under­stand­ing, a sense of com­mu­nity with oth­ers with like expe­ri­ences and a greater open­ness to receiv­ing help and man­ag­ing lifestyle. Of course there can also be neg­a­tive con­se­quences, but I believe that the per­cep­tion of those is gen­er­ally greater than the reality.

On the other end of the spec­trum from “mad pride” there are many who suf­fer from the debil­i­tat­ing effects of “mad shame”- an unwill­ing­ness to acknowl­edge a men­tal health diag­noses in ones self. In between those two extremes are the masses of peo­ple who have a men­tal health diag­noses that treat it as an ill­ness man­aged through some com­bi­na­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, self-medication or other treat­ment options.

When first diag­nosed with a men­tal ill­ness, I found myself some­where in the mid­dle– never ashamed, but nei­ther was I anx­ious to shout it from the rooftop. Since that first diag­noses there have been long peri­ods of dark­ness and frus­tra­tion, I’m in a good place now with a com­pletely dif­fer­ent diag­noses (ADHD). I now freely share my diag­noses and am feel­ing suc­cess­ful in work and fam­ily life and my ADHD is a an impor­tant part of that success.

Addi­tional Resources

• ‘Mad Pride’ Fights a Stigma (New York Times article)
• Mind­Free­dom (non-profit orga­ni­za­tion focused on human rights and alter­na­tives for peo­ple labeled with psy­chi­atric disabilities)
• Mad Pride Wikipedia Entry