stigma

Last night Active Minds held an unveiling of their “Stomp Out Stigma” video followed by a panel discussion, which included Anne, Michael Tratner (a professor of English and Film), and Elna Yadin and Alexis Rosenfeld (two psychologists at the Child Study Institute). 

Before starting Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, I was interested in memoir’s relation to mental illness. I wondered, are memoirs like Jamison’s successful? Are they able to capture the true nature of the illnesses they discuss? Do they work to change perceptions concerning mental illness?  What are the benefits and detriments of these types of personal narratives?  

One of the main questions we have to ask when thinking about mental disability in relation to “physical” disability is the dichotomy of invisibility and visibility.  I use the term “physical” loosely because more and more studies are finding that mental illness is a result of physical abnormalities in the brain and that it, too, is bodily.  Nonetheless, mental illness is often something we can’t see.  It can alter one’s behavior and mood, but these things aren’t quite as tangible as an actual disfiguration of the body’s surface

What brings me to studying disability studies and mental illness in relation to literature?  The summer after my freshman year I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD.  My journey with OCD has been a long one.  There was a time when my obsessions and rituals took up nearly every hour of the day, when I could barely leave my house, and when my parents thought they had lost their daughter forever.  When my ability to function was quickly declining, I decided to take a medical leave of absence from Bryn Mawr my sophomore year.  I enrolled in an intensive OCD treatment program, which gave me back the life I had lost and I was able to return to Bryn Mawr the following year.