Culture & Identity

Minds Matter Magazine Volume III Issue I Culture & Identity
In the language
of my discontent
Samantha Lauby
Psychiatric Language must coexist with the ways we talk about our mental
health experiences.
TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE ATTEMPT, DEATH
Image By Phoebe Maharaj
Coming out of the rabbit hole is not easy.
It involves motivation, patience, a touch of
creativity and one rule: don’t let the Queen
of Hearts take your head.
I tell my experiences with mental
health as metaphors because experiences
are beyond the limits of our language. I identify
with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
because the timing of the recent adaptation
coincided with a major transition in my
life. I was leaving my hometown to pursue
post-secondary education. I was going to a
new environment—one that would provide
the structure to let me thrive.
I did not want to go.
I had a small network of therapists,
psychiatrists and medical doctors I knew I
would lose if I moved away. Steeped in the
language of psychiatry, I was convinced that
my death would be under my control - a
suicide attempt that I couldn’t survive. The
aura of hopelessness that the language
provided made recovery seem impossible
and distress inescapable. I did not think I
would live beyond my twenty-fifth birthday.
Almost two years after entering University,
I was in recovery. Over my recovery, I
have adopted another metaphor: The Matrix.
I have chosen to take the red pill by reducing
psychotropic medications to a minimum and
shedding the language of psychiatry. This is
not an easy transition, but I am already reaping
the rewards.
With my own language, I can advocate
for my needs and learn to live with quirks
that people called a “disorder.” It is organized
chaos, thank you very much.
Along this 13-year journey, I was plastered
with labels like “generalized anxiety d
isorder,” “depression with psychotic features,”
“borderline personality disorder,”
and, most recently, “schizoaffective disorder.”
Though I cannot think of myself as having
these labels today, they will stick with me for
the rest of my life, shrouding the beauty of
my inner world.
I have experienced more stigma in
recovery than while I was suffering under
these labels. If I express any distress, people
- especially medical professionals - start to
question my recovery. While it is optional to
talk to acquaintances about my stresses, it is
required to talk, and be judged by, a professional
stranger. This stigma is amplified when
they know I am on a medication diet.
The language of psychiatry spreads
with the biomedical model - the view that
mental health conditions are caused by
abnormalities in the brain. I fear that this
stigma I experience will become more widespread.
It does not matter if the finger of
blame is pointed at my actions, my mind,
or my brain - if the language that surrounds
these labels (e.g., “deficit,” “faulty wiring,”
“inflexible”) does not change, we all suffer.
Katie Kilroy-Marac, an anthropology
professor at University of Toronto Scarborough,
also fears that a strict biomedical approach
can ignore our experiences and how
we can grow from them.
But Kilroy-Marac says this language
may help some narrate their experiences.
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