“I’m totally ADD this morning and can’t get anything done!”
“My OCD starts kicking in if I don’t wash the dishes while I am cooking.”
“I can’t think about the awkwardness of my middle school years without serious PTSD.”
“Her fashion sense is a bit bipolar: she has changed her outfit five times today!”
….Schizo, panic attack, depressed, suicidal…
I often cringe just a bit when I hear the increasingly common and colloquial application of clinical terms like this in such a casual manner. A quick google search shows there is no shortage of writing that addresses the concerns that come along with this behavior. I’m guilty myself at times but trying to do better.
On the other hand, it does represent the significant progress we’ve made in recent decades. The changing stigma of mental illness is described with fascinating detail in Roy Richard Grinker’s ““Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness.” In addition to thorough research and examples, Grinker offers perspective from the work of his own family. He honors their studies while also offering some pretty harsh criticism of their harmful judgements, even if typical among their contemporaries. While the history he unfolds can be quite uncomfortable, frustrating and sad it also ends with an appreciation of where we have arrived with increasing visibility, acceptance and care for the diverse range of mental diversity in the world. But we still have work to do.
Simultaneously, the evolution of stigma Grinker describes came to life in my fictional reading in interesting ways Most starkly, I started Charles Todd’s* “Rutledge Mysteries” series. Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge is trying to continue his career after the horrors of trench warfare in the Great War. The plot of the first novel deals directly with a character struggling from ongoing war trauma. But more poignantly, Rutledge himself carries on internal conversations with Hamish MacLeod, a casualty of the war who Rutledge feels the heavy weight of responsibility and blame. The term PTSD doesn’t show up in the novel. It didn’t exist yet but was being researched more closely than ever as “shell shock.” Consistent with Grinker’s history, Detective Rutlendge keeps the specter of MacLeod to himself and hints of the behavior have the future of his career on the line.
Similarly, Captain Jim Agnihotri in “Murder in Old Bombay” by Nev March carries haunting memories of his military service into his attempted career change to detective work. An incredible novel on its own merit for a tremendous description of colonial India, journeys into diverse South Asian territories and an authentic glimpse into the life of Bombay Parsees it too carries a thread of quiet struggle with mental trauma in silent suffering.
Perhaps these examples are appropriate since it was military research that eventually advanced so many of the early research on mental illness. The progress is especially stark when we consider the way mental illness has changed through depictions in film and television. Decades of films that seemed to focus on the unique challenges of more extreme conditions have turned increasingly to depictions of individual working through their disorders to cope and manage with success in the “normal” world: Doc Martin, Atypical, The Good Doctor, just to name a few. Even Pixar’s “Inside Out” provides a surprisingly frank and progressive portrayal of mental processes that were previously unspeakable due to stigma.
The derogatory use of mental health terms and the increasing misapplication of important clinical conditions will certainly continue to be a challenge in popular culture and language. But in other ways the progress of research and normalization has progressed so significantly that terms like ADD, PTSD and OCD are understood and appreciated to a much greater degree than ever before. And while misleading and inappropriate at times it also shows such incredible progress.
Most importantly, it demonstrates that it’s now much more common and accepted to share with increasingly trusted vulnerability what is happening in one’s mind and body. It’s easier to get help and to give help. And that is good for us all.
*I was fascinated to discover that Charles Todd is a pen name for a mother-son writing partnership from the United States.