What’s in a Name?
By KRISTIN SLYE, LMFT
I was a brand strategist and copywriter for over 20 years before I became a psychotherapist. Because of these two career paths, I now find myself uniquely situated to navigate the intersection of where language meet mental health.
A 21st century Jewish Rabbi shared this striking statement, “Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively use words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.”
For many years, I needed to understand the power and persuasion of words. Now, in the field of mental health, I’m hyperaware of how outdated language is holding back the evolution of mental wellness with harmful narratives. Leaders in the field like Gabor Mate and Maia Szalavitz have felt this way too and have been at the forefront of something called the person-centered movement.
In this new paradigm, the person, not the illness takes center stage. The idea is to move away from terms like alcoholic, bulimic, schizophrenic, and addict for two primary reasons.
1. These labels contain stigma. Their meaning, as held by society currently, is not neutral, but potentially damaging at an individual level.
2. It collapses a thing the person is experiencing into the person as a whole. If someone experiences addiction or maladaptive coping, it is not who they are, but by labeling them as such, it becomes a singular identity which is not fair to the complex full human being that they are. It leaves out the person.
These words are entering the realm of other reclaimed pejoratives. If you have personally experienced a mental health issue and want to use a term like alcoholic, bulimic, schizophrenic in reference to yourself, and you find it empowering, by all means go for it. However, using this word in reference to others has become oppressive and possibly even offensive. The movement is to now put the person first and acknowledge that their mental health challenge is not who they are, but something they are experiencing or have experienced in the past.
The alternative is more empowering phrasing using the person first. As in, “a person experiencing ___fill in blank___.” For example, “a person experiencing bulimia,” or, “a person experiencing addiction.” A mouthful and little more work? Yes. A little awkward at first? Yes. Yet, just like seatbelts were awkward and a little more work in the beginning, the pay-off of honoring the human being is well worth the effort.