Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

Stig­ma is when a per­son views an­oth­er in­di­vid­ual in a sub­jec­tive man­ner be­cause that in­di­vid­ual has a dis­tin­guish­ing mark, phys­i­cal dis­fig­ure­ment, or pe­cu­liar­i­ty that's as­sumed to be neg­a­tive.

Dis­crim­i­na­tion is when that neg­a­tive per­cep­tion is used against the in­di­vid­ual to de­ny him/her an equal op­por­tu­ni­ty in dai­ly life, deny­ing ac­cess to goods and ser­vices or the pos­si­bil­i­ty of em­ploy­ment, and/or the prospect for lo­cal/na­tion­al ser­vice.

A Huff­in­g­ton Post ar­ti­cle says, "Stig­ma is a prod­uct of ig­no­rance–it's when peo­ple know noth­ing about men­tal ill­ness that they tend to judge, ridicule, and os­tracise peo­ple af­fect­ed by it."

The US Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Health says, "Dis­crim­i­na­tion may be ob­vi­ous and di­rect, such as some­one mak­ing a neg­a­tive re­mark about your men­tal ill­ness or your treat­ment. Or it may be un­in­ten­tion­al or sub­tle, such as some­one avoid­ing you be­cause the per­son as­sumes you could be un­sta­ble, vi­o­lent, or dan­ger­ous." (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)."On the oth­er hand," says the Huff Post, "when peo­ple un­der­stand that men­tal ill­ness­es are just ill­ness­es–treat­able just like phys­i­cal ill­ness­es are–and they un­der­stand the symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness­es and the truths and myths sur­round­ing them, they stop be­ing prej­u­diced."

Neg­a­tive at­ti­tudes and be­liefs to­ward peo­ple with men­tal health is­sues are at a dis­heart­en­ing lev­el in T&T, caus­ing many not to reach out for help ow­ing to fear of prej­u­dice. Many peo­ple write to me week af­ter week telling me of their is­sues and the fear with which they car­ry them, es­pe­cial­ly the fear of oth­ers find­ing out and their be­ing judged and treat­ed un­fair­ly.Oth­ers write ask­ing how to help a re­cent­ly di­ag­nosed friend who has shut out every­one, re­fus­ing to in­ter­act even with­in her house­hold, pos­si­bly feel­ing that she's re­ceived a life sen­tence to hell.

Peo­ple are fear­ful that oth­ers in their fam­i­ly will find out, fright­ened about work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion, afraid of so­cial ex­clu­sion, dis­crim­i­na­tion and prej­u­dice, that peo­ple with men­tal health prob­lems ex­pe­ri­ence.Those of us who live with a men­tal health is­sue are among the most mar­gin­alised of groups with­in so­ci­ety. In T&T, there is no voice that speaks up for the men­tal­ly ill, so that dis­crim­i­na­tion re­mains dom­i­nant and prej­u­dice re­mains un­con­strained.

Most of­ten stig­ma against peo­ple with a men­tal ill­ness in­volves in­ac­cu­rate and hurt­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tions of them as vi­o­lent, com­i­cal, or in­com­pe­tent–de­hu­man­is­ing and mak­ing peo­ple an ob­ject of fear or ridicule (Sane, Aus­tralia).I know. I've been there. I have sat among some who oc­cu­py and oth­ers who wish to oc­cu­py the high­est seats of in­flu­ence and have been the sub­ject of ridicule with nary a word of de­fence or ob­jec­tion to sug­gest that any­one thinks, knows or un­der­stands that to sin­gle out a per­son's men­tal health is big­otry.

This col­umn was born out of the con­cern for ed­u­ca­tion and (per­haps) the stymieing of un­abat­ed stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion. On the day I ac­cept­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty I de­cid­ed to be a voice for the voice­less with men­tal ill­ness­es and, more so, an ad­vo­cate for those who fear the con­se­quences of speak­ing out.Two and a half years lat­er, all I've been able to do is con­vince some peo­ple that I'm mad, so un­will­ing are we to learn and change and so deeply en­trenched is stig­ma.

In the lat­est in­sult, I was asked, "Are you aware of what the Con­sti­tu­tion says and whether ac­cord­ing to the pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion, you have any health is­sue that would make you un­fit to hold of­fice in T&T?"(I know what the Con­sti­tu­tion says, but the ques­tion­er ev­i­dent­ly nev­er read it, does not un­der­stand it, or was giv­en bad ad­vice about it in or­der to dis­cred­it me.)

That came af­ter a pro­tract­ed out­burst that seem to doubt my in­tegri­ty but more so my san­i­ty, when I shared that I took a 90 per cent cut in my earn­ings to re­lo­cate to Moru­ga, which went like this: "That is mad­ness! That has to be mad­ness! Who does that? That is pure mad­ness!"Who does or says that kind of thing in 2014, ex­cept a Fri­day af­ter-work ine­bri­at­ed limer or an ill-in­formed T&T?

To­day, I've quot­ed writ­ings/opin­ions from a UK-based pub­li­ca­tion, an Aus­tralian ad­vo­ca­cy group, and a US Gov­ern­ment Web site to iden­ti­fy that first-class cit­i­zen­ry and cor­rect gov­er­nance in the de­vel­oped world stand on the side of the men­tal­ly ill, against stig­ma, and dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Hope­ful­ly T&T will first read, then un­der­stand, and fi­nal­ly, take a les­son in good lead­er­ship and pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment that may dis­cour­age the brutish thrill of cheap points.