Speech “The person behind the mental illness”

Hello my name is Anne Percy and I am here today to speak with you about

living with mental illness. Slide 1

I am not going to go over a timeline of my experience today. It is enough to

say that I have been living with varied diagnosis of mental illness since the

mid 1990s. I say living, sometimes I have been thriving and other times I

have just been scrapping by.

But I haven’t come to seek your sympathy. Instead I want to talk to you about

how people can get labeled by mental illness and how the person behind the

label can be forgotten. The media with their sensational headlines contribute

to the stigma that we face on a daily basis.

Slide 2 Stigma

Mental health stigma is a perceived negative attribute that causes someone to

devalue or think less of the person.

I know I will probably encounter mental health stigma if I talk people about my

health issues. I don’t believe I am defined by a medical condition.

Just like someone who survives a heart attack or cancer isn’t defined by their

illness or their treatment, I am not defined by my mental illness, by the times I

have spent in hospital and by the impacts of the different medications I take.

My life is certainly affected by these things. In many ways the impacts are

negative. If I could choose I wouldn’t want to have a diagnosis of

schizophrenia. I don’t think anyone would. At times I still struggle with

accepting this diagnosis with the medications I take, the dosage and their side

effects.

What really annoys me is being defined by my condition. I am not a psycho, I

do not have multiple personalities, I don’t hear voices all the time, I am not a

danger to others although I have sometimes hurt myself.

If you only know about mental illness by what you read in the paper, watch on

TV or hear on the radio, you might believe that someone with schizophrenia is

someone to be feared. They are killers and should not be approached.

A recent example from Western Australia helps demonstrates my point.

Just before the start of mental health week, a 38-year-old man didn’t return to

his hostel in Perth. The media were alerted with concerns being expressed

about his health and his welfare Slide 2.

These were soon replaced by sensational headlines - Slide 3

Weeks later his friends came forward and we found out more about this man,

about the person behind the headline, about the background to his illness and

his violent behavior, the scary images were replaced by more everyday

poses. Slide 4

Enoch Samuel Walsh still remains missing, whereabouts unknown. The way

the media covered his disappearance reverberates across the community and

reinforces the negative views about people with mental illness.

Such coverage unravels the positive stories we hear about people who live

with and survive mental illness and manage come out the other side with the

support of their family, friends and health professionals.

I hope that by speaking out at events like this I can help to raise awareness

about stigma and help people to rethink their prejudices to see the person

behind the diagnosis.

Thank you