Volodja wrote:
MidlifeAspie wrote:
Jono wrote:
Well, the point is, why should the term "mental health problem" sound suspicious if the majority of people with mental health problems are not a danger to other people?
Because if you have depression you say you have depression.
If you have OCD, ADHD or Autism you say you have OCD, ADHD or Autism.
If you have pedophilia or are a sociopath, you say you have "mental health issues". Otherwise you just say what you have.
Agreed 100%
It's not about being suspicious of someone with mental health problems - it's about being suspicious of someone who says "I have mental health problems" like that
I agree too. It's the lack of specificity that is ominous. I once had a roomate who was psychotic. She told me that she took meds for it and had not had an episode since she started taking them in her teen years, But that she was a little spacey because of the meds so if I found her to be a little spacey, that was the reason. That specificity was reassuring. The more specifics a person gives, the more likely others are to be ok with it (unless the specifics are themselves alarming, such as an arrest record).
And for the record, she was spacey. And that was ok. Other things might not have been ok. If she had decided that she preferred psychotic episodes to being spacey, that would have been her choice. But my choice would have been not to have her as a roomate. Living with a spacey person is just fine with me. Living with a person who has psychotic episodes would not be. Everybody has their own personal feelings for what they can personally deal with and what they can't in their roomate and love relationships. When it came to somebody's mental health issues, I would need to know how it would impact me personally. Her medicated spaciness had no ill effect on me. Psychotic episodes would have. It isn't immoral or shallow for people to decide that there are some things they just don't want to deal with on a daily basis if they can possibly help it.