Telling Is Risky Business: Mental Health Consumers Confront Stigma

by Otto F. Wahl

Book Overview

Individuals with a mental illnesses--such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression--have a double burden, Otto Wahl writes. Not only must they cope with disabling disorders, but they also must contend with the negative attitudes of the public toward those disorders. To truly understand the full extent of this stigma, we need to hear from the consumers (the term used in this book for people with mental illness) themselves. Telling is Risky...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813527244
• ISBN13: 9780813527246
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Telling is a Risking Business, but a Morally and Proper Business

Five stars, way up to the sky! What a wonderful book. My angel bought this book for me a couple of weeks ago and we both thought it was great. I have bipolar with psychotic features (Bipolar I) and indeed there is a great stigma in our society about mental illness and particularly with the psychotic based mental illnesses (paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar I, psychotic depression and post-partum psychosis - a total of 8 million US people). This book was a bright spot for me because it has been a great struggle for me to talk about it publicly, but I know deep down it is a just and proper struggle and I must do it. The book discusses others' struggles which are similar to mine. The more of us who can talk about it and do talk about it, then the better it will be for us and society in the future. But for us, freedom of speech ain't free. Just since I started talking publicly around 6 months ago, I have had to up my daily lithium dose from 600mg to 900mg (to keep my mania under control), and my Zyprexa from 5mg to 10mg (to keep my psychotic symptoms at bay), and have had to add Ambien, a sleep aid so that I am able to get plenty of sleep. With these proactive measures I have been able to talk openly about it, including other posts here. Because of the stigma that this book so eloquently discusses, I did not go in to get help for a long, long time. I had eleven manic/psychotic episodes over a 24 year period before I asked for help. Then I got this diagnosis and the proper medication and counseling to combat it. I'm not cured, there is no cure for this stuff yet, but I have the best treatments available. I have learned all I can about this illness and it is better now and I can accept it for what it is. It is caused because my brain is not able to properly regulate adrenalin, dopamine and serotonin levels on its own. The medications bring my levels back into the norms of sanity. Like others in the book, I have looked at this illness and have taught myself not to fear it. And to not look at it as a weakness. No fear, no weakness. I can accept the years and years of what was my unknown tormenter and predator. I have learned to deal with the accompanying horrific memories and the PTSD and accept it. And as I look around my room and notice the red monster on a horse in one corner and the dark rabbit monster in the other corner, they no longer scare me. But I respect them, for I have them in my Zyprexa freeze. Frozen, indefinitely. But they are real, for if I stop taking my Zyprexa, they thaw out after about 2 weeks and come back to life. I've learned that lesson. But now I know that I can control them, and not the other way around. And I have gotten myself well enough now so that I can tell others about them. What are they? Are they demons... a bogie monster, perhaps? Phantoms? The grinch? I don't think so, because I can control them now. I think they are a cumulation of all of my deepest paranoid fears which flood over

The Reality of Most Living with Mental Illness

If you have battled clinical depression or any other mental illness Otto Wahl's "Telling is Risky Buisness" will hit home in a painful way. Wahl reveals what most sufferers experience, the tension between fighting a terrifying illness while maintaining your integrity to non sufferers who fail to understand.An important book.