Words hurt. People are clumsy. Many of us are clumsy and hurtful in our forms of expression.
In the ongoing attempt to push aside some of the cobwebby things that keep us from better understanding issues of mental health, working on not using psych terms in a cavalier manner is not a bad place to start. Here are three commonly abused terms.
Schizophrenia
Remember the T-shirts that said: 'I'm schizophrenic and so am I'?
If you ever wanted an example of how easy it is for nonsense ideas to proliferate, here you go. Sure, it got the laughs, but only because, like the person who came up with it, we didn't understand what schizophrenia was.
Schizophrenia has exactly nothing to do with multiple personalities, and yet it was and continues to be pervasively and perversely misunderstood.
To try to understand how we got this so wrong for so long we might look at the word itself. From its Greek origin we get skhizein (split) and phren (mind). But the split mind the namers-of-illnesses were thinking of was that of someone living in both reality and delusion.
Schizophrenia is considered one of the most serious mental conditions, yet we still don't know enough. What we do know are the signs of suffering, including hallucinations and delusions. Sometimes their speech of schizophrenics is garbled, which leads to the belief that their thinking has become disorganised.
The next time you think it necessary to tell someone they're behaving like two different people, say: 'You seem to be behaving like two different people.'
Narcissism
These days it seems if a relationship flounders or you're having a rough time at work, the only possible explanation is that someone in the equation is a narcissist.
Narcissism wasn't invented last week, but it's become quite popular recently. As in any field of study, there are phases of greater and lesser interest in different ideas. I'm not saying it's a fad. It just has our attention. Why? Political leaders? Millennials?
This feels dangerous because it seems to be giving a ready answer to a great swathe of highly complicated situations and problems. In its simplest formulation all we have is: narcissist bad; not-narcissist good.
A narcissist is not simply a vain and selfish person.
While they do lack empathy, believe themselves superior to others and display a host of behaviours that show an exaggerated self-worth, they are also fragile and live with underlying insecurities. Because their expectations of what they deserve are unrealistic, they are often disappointed.
There is no doubt that they hurt others; they are also people whose disorder compromises their own lives. Because of how they see themselves, the odds they'll look for help are slim.
What compounds the worry is how easy it is to dismiss them. If you've had a bad experience with one, 'She's such a narcissist,' relegates the person to wherever you put offen
