How can SE and community improve respecting feelings of mentally ill people and their relatives/friends?

Question

There was a (now deleted) question on MSO about freezing the meta room (10k link). The answer was that nasty things were said there, now the nastiness got cleared and the room was unfrozen when heads cooled down. All would be OK, but one detail came, that froze me. During refuting those unacceptable things said in chat (I believe they were like this as they are cleared now and I couldn't see them) the following statement came:

We as a company provide inclusive spaces. That goes for our offices, our sites, everything. Conversations about you coming to terms with people not fitting your understanding of what an identity means are for your therapist, not a chatroom we host :)

https://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/47441946#47441946

Now this really hurts. I had mentally ill people in my family. I know also about such people in my surrounding. I have prevented multiple suicide attempts. I know people who lost their loved ones due to suicides. Dismissing anyone with "talk with your therapist instead" in my opinion has nothing to do with being inclusive to those, that really need a therapist's help. And to those who stand behind them. And it didn't come from a random hater, but from a Stack Exchange employee.

I believe this is against current CoC, but still it comes so easy and seems that no one cares. Are there any plans to achieve more welcoming attitude in this aspect? Are some CoC changes needed?

UPDATE
I'm grateful for Tim's answer. My intention, however, was not to point on any particular user, but rather to ask for some reflection on how Welcome Wagon was done. I mean, it is almost one year and a half since it started and still such a stigmatized group is forgotten. What went wrong? Do we need any changes in policies to fix the situation?

Answer 1

It was insensitive of me to use that phrasing and I regret doing that. Hard stop.

I also suffer from chronic anxiety (for which I see a therapist) and I was under a huge amount of stress and pressure while that was going on. It wasn't my intention to mock anyone. I just had seeing a therapist in my head at the time.

I take responsibility for what I said, and I've learned something from it.

Thank you for pointing it out constructively.

Answer 2

Are there any plans to achieve more welcoming attitude in this aspect?

The apparent answer is no. The company does not care. Since this question got posted there was:

• Change to CoC focusing on pronouns usage. No notion about avoiding sanism.
• I answered to FAQ post about CoC pointing to this question - got some upvotes to the question, nothing else happened.
• A bizarre edit war about changing made up name from Nancy to Bob in a story told.
• An edit to my question changing the subject from mental illness (I really mean things like F20.x, F25.x, F32.x from ICD-10) to gender identity.

It looks like stigmatization of mental illness is a non-issue during the current welcoming war. A bit sad.

Answer 3

Mental illness is serious. And the US’s under-investment in mental health care, and the stigma on getting treatment is literally killing people.

This is an issue I care deeply about.

First off, I’m truly sorry that you’ve had to deal with the frustration and often time sense of helplessness that comes from seeing people you care about struggle with mental illness, and suicide in particular. And while it’s tragic that it was needed, the fact that that you were able to support folks enough to prevent additional tragedies is something you can take pride in for your whole life.

Suicide kills roughly fifty thousand people a year just in the US, making it the 10th highest cause of death. But that understates the epidemic, since many of the ones above it tend to impact much older individuals. Suicide is the second highest cause of death for Americans between 15 and 24.

I’m close to certain that the subtext of Tim’s comment wasn’t the one you thought.

And I don’t blame you at all.

Tim’s comment runs the risk of being misread as suggesting he was being dismissive or insulting, but he definitely was not.

I do get what bothered you (and probably some others) about a comment like that. In a context where many people fail to take mental illness seriously, or where therapy / treatment are stigmatized, it’s easy to presume a speaker might be disrespectful, which might lead you to interpret the sub-text of Tim’s comment to be something like,

“If that’s what you think, you must be mentally ill.”

That would indeed be cruel and completely unacceptable here. But he didn’t say that, and I’m close to certain that he meant something very different.

For context, I worked with Tim for roughly 8 years, and know him pretty well. And I can tell you pretty much for sure that the other way to read that comment is what he intended:

“As someone who knows how helpful therapy can be to most people, I’d encourage anyone who’s struggling deeply with their own beliefs, or to relate to someone’s identity that you personally just can’t wrap their heads around to work with just the kind of professional who can actually help you examine yourself and at your own approach to see if there’s a new angle that might help you learn to understand and respect them better in he future.”

Was the phrasing sub-optimal since it can reasonably be mis-read? Totally. But was it dismissive, insulting, or disrespectful? Definitely not, at least not in the context in which it was being offered.

EDIT: @rjzii made an excellent point below that I want to incorporate here.

I believe that when we examine how our behavior affects individuals in marginalized view, we should focus on those individuals’ experiences more than our intent. For me, the easiest way to explain this is that since my intent is to be supportive and not hurtful, if someone’s experience isn’t aligned with whatever I thought my intent was, I should try to figure out how to adjust to fix that. In this instance, I think Tim (and I) are getting a new insight into how some people experience a comment like that, and it’s valuable input that should affect one’s future approach to things.

Answer 4

Note: I'm not a native English speaker, so I might not see every connotation that a specific word has. In advance, forgive me for that.

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I originally left a comment, but I think this could have some value as an answer, so here I go.

First, I have mental health issues myself: anxiety, depression and eating disorder (this last one isn't officially diagnosed yet).

I don't think focusing on a specific incident of ordinary sanism is really going to be productive because people could argue that this specific case wasn't sanism. Since this isn't the point, I will focus more on "general events".

I do believe that SE could be more welcoming toward people with mental health issues. So, in this answer, I will talk about a general pattern that I have noticed (not only in SE but everywhere) and that annoys me a lot.

_{Side note: I already talked about it in here, so you could check it out if you are curious.}

The general pattern I have noticed

When someone is behaving badly. For example, when someone is being racist/sexist/homophobe/transphobe/a bigot/etc, people will tend to call them "insane, crazy, etc..." even if this person has no mental illness whatsoever!

I know a lot of (French) people who casually call Trump a "crazy man" (in the "mentally ill" sense). I also read newspapers who call mass-shooter "lunatic","nuts", etc...

This isn't true. Those people have no mental illness. Calling them mentally ill when they aren't is very detrimental to the mentally ill community. It's stigmatizing and makes people believe that someone mentally ill is necessarily dangerous.

You know what? I am mentally ill and the only person I'm likely to hurt is myself. In fact, I am very likely to hurt myself and very unlikely to hurt anyone else.

But, if people believe that my mental illness is a risk to them, then I won't talk to them about the issues I'm facing. I won't ask them for help when I need it and no-one will know I desperately need help. Stigmatizing people with mental illness is literally killing us. Because people with mental health issue end up killing themselves rather than facing the stigma of being mentally ill.

So please, unless you know someone is struggling with mental illness and you know that their behavior is due to this mental illness, don't call them "crazy" or "nuts". Don't use words that imply that they are mentally ill.

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I feel like I'm unable to properly convey why this is so bad, so here is some reading for you to do:

• Six Myths and Facts about Mental Illness

• Sanism and the language of mental illness

• ‘Sanism’, A socially acceptable prejudice: addressing the prejudice associated with mental illness in the legal system

• Acknowledging sanism

Also related:

• Ableism

Answer 5

I have a diagnosed mental health condition. So do many of my family members and close friends.

My husband, brother, sister in law, cousin and two friends all committed suicide. It's something I take seriously.

I've had decades of therapy and adjusted medication over the years. I recently had an adjustment of medication and it made me more vulnerable.

The problem with mental illness is it has been stigmatised. I remember sitting in a neuroscience lecture and the professor said if someone has diabetes there's no issue in terms of shame, but if there's something wrong with your brain people get stigmatised (this is many years ago!). I'm speaking out, as the only way to do remove stigmas is to come clean. This does take a risk of people using it against me.

I've struggled on this site for nearly 8 years and it's embarrassed the life out of me that people can see my emotional instabilities that I desperately struggle with and try to manage in a public place. But I refuse to not participate in life. It has meant if I come on too strong I need to be reflective and apologise. I find it extremely hard to keep an even keel amidst pile on and over hot topics. The employees on this site and other moderators on Stack Overflow have been nothing but super supportive and tolerant with me. For that I am grateful and I know they've desperately tried to steer me in the right direction. It's hard I have an incurable condition which has limited treatments available. But I am self aware and strive very hard through all this to be the best me I can be.

One thing I do want to say to people, in all my endeavours on this site, please realise I also want the best of this site, for us to be the best community we can be and for me to be the best me I can be. I do not fit in with people well, so please feel free to honestly ask for clarification. I have a weird style of trying to get a point across that I know has offended people at times and for that I am sorry. I'm trying to navigate this crazy notion of interpersonal relationships and am open to honest feedback.

Take care all and hugs to people who struggle in painful silence. You are not alone.