Positioning “For quality information” of the Committee for Mental Health in First Person
The Committee for Mental Health in the First Person of SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA launches a statement so that the media do not publish stigmatizing information.
The Pro Mental Health Committee of SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA, made up of people with their own experience, asks the media through this statement, that do not perpetuate stigma and rejection of people with mental health problems, through the publication of news that relates them to situations of violence. The full statement is reproduced below:
«One of the uses of language is to serve as a vehicle for understanding, and as we are able to define a social reality, language will also serve to establish a link between the people who make up society.
Within society, and as citizens with full rights, we find a large group of people who have experienced a mental health problem.
Like any other person, the first thing we seek is to be able to develop an independent life project, vital conditions that allow us to enjoy our talents and abilities, with total autonomy.
However, severe language impairment that circulates through the networks of the information society presents us as unpredictable, and potentially violent people. This language is an invisible barrieror stigma, which de facto makes it impossible for us to make the desired progression in life.
Thus, from time to time, we can read in the pages of events an unfair, unspeakable, and unscientific tagline: “the murderer suffered from a psychiatric disorder.”
Thus, a cause-effect relationship is established between the violent event and the mental health problem of the person in question. When this message is launched, stigma and rejection are being perpetuated.
When a judgment is not based on verified and quality information, the only possible reading is the reading of instincts and prejudice.
Resorting to stereotypes and simplification is one of the most damaging forms of injustice when it comes to educating the collective conscience, since each person is the result of their experience and their vital circumstances. And not just from the fact of suffering from a mental health problem.
The argument does not hold: if the violent person is a patient in the psychiatric area, the cause is the mental health problem and the rest of the determining factors are ignored. However, Statistically we are a group less prone to violence than the general population, and in fact we are more likely to suffer from it. This statement is completely nonsense.
It is because of all this, that we call on the media to move on from this outdated and unsubstantiated languagededicate themselves to informing instead of confusing, and assume their responsibility in the formation of a positive image of mental health.
The Committee for Mental Health In First Person, of the SALUD MENTAL ESPAÑA Confederation, is the largest effort to represent the group of users of mental health services. And we think that the processes that surround mental health are a natural phenomenon that affect all people.
Nobody is free to see one day in the waiting room of a Mental Health unit, and society must be prepared to offer an answer, a language that binds us and frees us from ties.