"Our Symptoms, Ourselves"
Alexandra Kimball, Hazlitt
November 29, 2012
“It is as if she lives each moment twice: first through direct experience, and then through the lens of a perceived non-crazy other.” This is Alexandra Kimball’s description of her friend Rebecca, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2006. In this piece, Kimball looks at Mad Pride, a movement begun in Toronto in 1993 that aims to celebrate mental illness, looking to empower those suffering from it, instead of stigmatizing them. For Kimball’s friend, the mere idea of being labeled with a condition alters her reality and “compels her to distinguish her ‘real’ feelings from her symptoms.” Yet movements like Mad Pride, as progressive as they are, also rely on a patient’s ability to be a part of a community. That ability may depend on access to a functioning and affordable health care system, like Canada’s, which is committed to the treatment of mental illness.
Alexandra Kimball, Hazlitt
November 29, 2012
“It is as if she lives each moment twice: first through direct experience, and then through the lens of a perceived non-crazy other.” This is Alexandra Kimball’s description of her friend Rebecca, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2006. In this piece, Kimball looks at Mad Pride, a movement begun in Toronto in 1993 that aims to celebrate mental illness, looking to empower those suffering from it, instead of stigmatizing them. For Kimball’s friend, the mere idea of being labeled with a condition alters her reality and “compels her to distinguish her ‘real’ feelings from her symptoms.” Yet movements like Mad Pride, as progressive as they are, also rely on a patient’s ability to be a part of a community. That ability may depend on access to a functioning and affordable health care system, like Canada’s, which is committed to the treatment of mental illness.
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