We stigmatize those with mental illness while “normalizing” the wrong things …

For months leading up to national Mental Health Awareness Month (which is May of each year), I’ve been seeing numerous pleas in articcles and on social media for people to “normalize” mental health and experiencing mental illness.

In other words, instead of ostracizing and stigmatizing people with mental illness, we NEED to understand that EVERY HUMAN BEING at times struggle with mental health issues, and suffering with a mental illness is not a sin, or an oddity, but an experience many people face in the same way many people face physical health illnesses.

Doing so does not make then abnormal!

Some mental illnesses does mean that there’s an abnormality with some brain function, but that is also what YOU experience when you feel confused, overwhelmed, forgetful, irrational, etc.

We need to begin to understand that WE DO HARM TO OTHERS when we treat people with mental health issues or mental illness as being abnormal human beings.

Sadly, we do just that routinely.

Yet, here’s a grossly irrational element to that fact — while stigmatizing people with mental health issues and mental illness, treating them as abnormal humans, we “normalized” behaviors we should reject as “normal.” Pastor Charles Wallis, when addressing this issue, asked:

“Why have we accepted dysfunction as normal?”

As an example of how irrational we can be in normalizing dysfunction, Wallis shares the following “Dear Annie” inquiry:

“Dear Annie: My husband and I are separated and he moved in with his girlfriend six weeks ago. A few weeks ago, I had to call the girlfriend’s husband in order to pass along some information. ‘Harris’ and I met for dinner and haven’t stopped calling each other since. We occasionally meet for coffee or drinks. There is an attraction that gets stronger each time. I have met Harris’ children and my kids have met him. However, our spouses have no idea we are seeing each other. I realize we are not the ones who broke up the marriages, but I just don’t know whether this is proper. We seem so compatible. Should we continue this relationship at a slow pace to see where it takes us, or must we go our separate ways? — Waiting Patiently”

In addition to “normalizing dysfunction,” we have normalized lifestyles that create, and then foster mental health issues (and even mental illness) such as chronic stress, and dangerous levels of anxiety and depression forged from patterns and habits of irrational thinking, cognitive distortions, and perpetual negative rumination.

Considering that our thoughts create our emotions, and the combination of our thoughts and emotions create our behavior, our “normalizing” the above only creates corresponding emotions that lead to behaviors that cause us trouble, especially in our relationships, both personal and professional.

We have even normalized our sin that we refuse to repent of.

We don’t do such things occasionally, we have made them our lifestyle.

With that, we’ve normalized the wrong things.

Perhaps we need to pull the plank from our own eyes and STOP ostracizing and stigmatizing those with mental health issues and mental illness, get our own lives in order, and learn to treat every human being with the dignity due them as someone made in the image of God.

Scotty