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I don't mind the double-post, but I'll reply to both of them at once. I have mental health issues. Nearly everyone I care about has mental health issues. Some of those issues are moderately serious problems, some are minor annoyances. It sucks having problems. I'm sad you have problems. I'm sad I have problems. I hope your problems resolve themselves, and/or you learn better coping strategies, and that life is as nice to you as possible. But none of that changes my perspective that it's reasonable for me to characterize the world around me. And I have a limited cognitive budget. There's a whole bunch I don't know about the world, including mental illness, so I by no means assume that my model is terrific, but I still need to make choices. Y'know, I don't know if it will rain today, but I still need to decide what jacket to wear. Identifying other human behaviour as extreme is useful. Identifying other human behaviour as harmful is useful. Identifying other human behaviour as extreme-and-alarming-in-ways-that-seem-like-maybe-they're-mental-illness is useful. Knowing more would be better, but I've got a whole bunch of shit to learn, and this is seriously not my top priority. Based on all of the above, it seems to me that the only sane thing to do is sometimes identify other people's behaviour as crazy. And since I live in a city, with millions of people, most of the people I meet get an instant shallow analysis, because otherwise I wouldn't get anything done. So for my limited-cognitive-budget purposes, some people are "that crazy person". I don't know if I've never called a person "a crazy", but I don't see a problem with doing so. To your point in this comment, I never for a moment said that "just because someone has a mental health issue, they're violent". I encourage you to read more carefully. I said that arguing about their probability of victimhood is a logical fail that does not help address fears that such-and-such a person is a threat. It has no predictive value, and will not persuade most people that have the concern in the first place. |
> I encourage you to read more carefully.
You should take your own advice.
Again most people in this thread have said: describing behaviours as crazy isn't the problem. Describing people as crazy is.
> but I don't see a problem with doing so
It makes you sound stupid. It makes you sound like that embarrassing racist grandparent.
It creates a culture where it's acceptable to shoot and kill people with mental illness (about half the people killed by US police each year have mental illness). It creates a culture where people with mental illness are discriminated against in the workplace. It makes it harder for people with mental illness to seek treatment.
Stigma kills people.