Dallin Paul Looking Good

Congratulations to my youngest brother Dallin Paul who graduates from high school today. After high school, many students with disabilities are offered the opportunity to to participate in some type of post-high education program. Dallin Paul is graduating with an exceptionally large cohort of peers in special education and because of poor planning on the part of the school district his options for a post high education have been severely limited.

Long story short, the school district picked the wrong family to try and place a student in a converted gym for a classroom with little opportunity for community involvement or interaction with any nondisabled peers. If anyone from the school district is reading this, did you not realize that the Phillips family has multiple Special Education degrees, a Master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling, Part of a Doctoral degree in Rehabilitation Counseling and a Juris Doctorate? On top of that we have a combined lot of years as teachers and administrators in special education and direct care of person with disabilities. Game on.

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