Bipolar Today

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The BBC News Magazine ran an interesting article yesterday about the prevalence of mental illness terms outside of their standard context. For example, it discussed the way that people who are especially neat are called “OCD”, the market is called “bipolar” and the confusion of schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. Two sides of the debate are presented. On the one side, people argued that metaphoric uses of mental illness terms trivialize the illnesses and increase stigma. On the other side, people argued that metaphoric uses are opportunities to discuss the condition and attempts to eliminate metaphoric uses would be a form of political correctness.

Commentary

I discussed this issue to some extent in my blog last week, when I discussed the use of the term “bipolar” to describe markets. What I find odd about the BBC’s discussion is that it seems to miss what is wrong with most of these metaphorical uses. The problem isn’t simply that these are metaphors, but that they are pejorative and inaccurate metaphors. Calling the market “bipolar” isn’t usually even accurate, unless one means to say that the market is having a mixed episode or is rapid cycling. Calling someone who oscillates between character traits “schizophrenic” confuses schizophrenia with MPD, and so forth.

I don’t really mind hyperbole and the apparent effect that it’s trivializing the conditions used in the hyperbole (compare, for instance, walking for a few miles and then saying “my feel feel like they are going to fall off”). Rather, what concerns me is the way that mental health terms are being used to criticize people, and the way that the application of these terms is spreading inaccurate hyperbole.

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2. Chicago Police Develop New Protocols For Mental Illness
3. Mental Illness Leads To Worse Oral Health
4. Borna Disease Virus Elimated as Cause of Mental Illness
5. Mental Illness in California Prisons