May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
First Christian Church is dedicated to ending the stigma that persists regarding mental health. One of the best ways to end the stigma regarding mental health is to learn how to communicate better when we talk about our own or others’ mental health.
Here are a few keys to doing better in our communications:
- Avoid correlations between criminality and mental illness
- But do correlate more between mental illness and suicide
- Avoid words like “crazy” or “psycho”
- If you feel comfortable talking about your own experience with mental health, by all means, do so
- Don’t define a person by his/her mental illnesses
- Separate the person from the problem
- Sometimes the problem isn’t that we’re using the wrong words, but that we’re not talking at all
- Recognize the amazing contributions of people with mental health differences
- Humor helps
For the full article, see “How Should We Talk About Mental Health?” by Thu-Huong Ha) https://ideas.ted.com/how-