My Dear Abigail,

I wish I had a bigger upvote! What an article. So necessary. So astute.

I very much appreciate your effort to describe how psychiatric disorders are on a continuum, but may be characterized by certain qualities--suffering and inability to cope chief among these.

Stigma, I think, will linger until science is better able to diagnose and explain psychiatric disorders. There will be a fear among many in the general public that aberrant, even dangerous, behavior is possible because the treating physician doesn't really 'understand' a patient's disorder.

Have you even had people to treat you unfairly, or in a judgemental way to the point you thought to yourself “hey, give me a break, I am not like that!"

This was certainly true in my youth. After a while I learned to embrace the differences, perceived or otherwise. Age does have its virtues 😇 A great advantage of having experienced being 'different'--I think you imply this in your statement--is that we are better able to embrace the differences of others.

I love the way you capture the unfairness of mental illness as a label:

it would be distasteful to refer to someone with breast cancer, for instance, as cancerous

We have come a long way from snake pits and lobotomies (although not everywhere is this true), but we have such a long way to go. It's up to each one of us to approach others, no matter how 'different, with reason and compassion. Thank you for using your eloquence and knowledge to help us achieve that acceptance.

With affection and great respect,
AB