“Pain in the brain is equated to weakness. This is the crucial disparity with physical health problems.”
In his the Future Patient Blog, David Gilbert writes:
“I am no big fan of mental health awareness days (see here). The ‘awareness industry’ should be more about ‘understanding’ what people go through in terms of sense of pain, choice, control and meaning (see here).
We need to understand why people still feel shame and stigma about ‘coming out’. Without an understanding of this, no amount of celebrity exhortation and spouting of the ‘one in four’ mantra will help. I have written about how this manifests when it comes to the world of work (see here).
The pivot upon which all else turns is this: That to be mentally ill, or to have mental health problems, is to be seen as fundamentally weak.
However, we dress up the language of emotional suffering or distress, we are deemed weak. Explicitly or implicitly. Pain in the brain is equated to weakness. This is the crucial disparity with physical health problems.
The word ‘weak’ has its own resonance. Weak in life. Weak in work. Weak in the head.
Some have extolled the virtues of ‘vulnerability’, thus reframing the notion of weakness (see here). I want to tackle this in a different way, by saying very simply …”
Read more here.
