Nickelodeon Criticized for Stigmatizing Stereotype

You might remember that I created an award called the Stupidity Award for Promoting Prejudice a while back and gave the first to an NBC sports writer who didn’t see anything wrong with a high school dance team in Waunakee, Wisconsin wearing straight jackets with the word PSYCHO WARD printed on them as they performed in a state competition.   

I was tipped off to that school’s insensitive, stigma-promoting  performance by a fellow mental health blogger, Chrisa Hickey, who posts her thoughts at The Mindstorm: Raising a Mentally Ill Child.

Chrisa sent me an email about a new example of stigma in the media. From reading her note, it sounds as if another SAPP award is due.

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Gleeful for GLEE! Mental Health First Aid and the Death of A Friend.

A few weeks ago, my daughter, Traci, put together a short video that showed how persons with mental disorders are often the victims of prejudice, stupidity and stigma. One of the most offensive clips came from the popular FOX Television show, GLEE. In that episode, the talented Gwyneth Paltrow dressed as Mary Todd Lincoln, announced that she had bipolar disorder, and proclaimed that a teapot was talking to her.  I was disgusted.

GLEE redeemed itself last week in what was one of the most poignant exchanges about mental illness that I have seen on mainstream television. If you missed the clip, here it is. It is three minutes long and I would urge you to watch it.

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Stupidity Award for Promoting Prejudice

I’ve decided to begin giving an award to persons or groups who show that they are prejudice against persons with mental illnesses. I’m calling it the Stupidity Award for Promoting Prejudice or the SAPP.  I’m sad to announce that the first recipient is Rick  Chandler a writer with NBC SPORTS. 

In a column published February 5th on Off the Bench, Chandler encouraged the Waunakee Wisconsin High School dance team to not change its “rather unique routine” when it competes in an upcoming state competition. Chandler writes:

 In it, the team “gets crazy” while wearing uniforms resembling straitjackets and restraints with the words “Psych Ward” on them. The girls, however, have been forced to tone down their routine after complaints from mental health advocates and parents that their act mocks the mentally ill. Political correctness gone mad? You be the judge….

Not that they should be apologizing in the first place. Exactly who is crazy here? If the girls feel in retrospect that their routine is insensitive and wrong, they should admit it and dump it. If they don’t feel that way, they should keep it unchanged and go full-speed ahead with the madness. Teaching our children to back down under pressure is not cool…Look, until we get a complaint from Giants’ reliever Brian Wilson, I say that his dance routine is good to go as is.    

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No Laughing Matter

   

 I believe all of us should do our best to fight  stigma. It might be as simple as not laughing when someone tells a joke that belittles a person with a mental disorder. Or it could be as bold as launching a boycott of a business whose commercials or product names are stigmatizing. 

This week, Karen Easter, in Knoxville, Tennessee, became appalled when she saw an offensive video clip that was posted on the website of  the Knoxville News Sentinel newspaper. The clip had been taken with a cell phone and it showed an adult man talking off his clothes and walking down the center of a busy shopping mall. The story that accompanied the clip reported that the man had removed his clothing because he believed there were “snakes in his pants and he had pain in his legs.” You could hear the person who took the video laughing at the sight and the website story immediately attracted a score of sarcastic comments along the ilk of  “spitting snakes” and other sexual innuendos.

The caption called the man a “streaker” but when you  read the story, it became clear that this young man had a mental problem. He was taken by the police to a local mental health center. 

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Outpouring of Frustration, What’s Next?

I have been inundated this week with emails, mostly from parents and family members, expressing frustration and anger about our broken mental health care system. 

Here is a sampling:

*You touched my heart today on Sunday’s CNN show. I tried to get my son help over and over. He is now in prison. .. What now? No education, no job, a criminal record….no help.

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Apology from NPR’s CEO to NAMI

Last Friday afternoon, Michael J. Fitzpatrick, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, received a telephone call from Vivian Schiller, the CEO of National Public Radio, during which she apologized for a comment that she made during the firing of Juan Williams.  

Schiller made a flippant remark during the recent Williams’ controversy, saying that my former Washington Post colleague and friend, needed to consult “his psychiatrist.”

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