Blog For Dignity

It’s International Human Rights Day and the World Health Organization’s focus is on the Rights of the Mentally Ill. Usually, I would go on and on about this subject and write a small novel, but if you’ve read anything on my blog recently, you’d know that I’m really not in the novel-writing mindset at the moment….so I just wanted to say a couple of things before I go back under my covers.

First of all, I have a mental illness & many of my readers do also. We work, we vote, we do normal things that everybody does…we just have to take medicine. Yet, we are the family members that everyone else thinks they should be careful around, people are threatened by us for no reason, and employers may not hire us if they find out we have a mental illness. Those who trust us, don’t always completely trust us…because WHAT IF…we forget our medicine, we embarrass them, or in some way come unhinged.

But – today I don’t want to think about all the negative stuff that’s come along with being mentally ill, in my case, bipolar. I want to make sure that all of us, who are mentally ill & are able to fight for our rights, do it. Not just for us, but for those of us who’s illness is far worse than our own… the ones who can’t take care of themselves and fight for their own rights…the over-medicated people who have been sent somewhere, not to help them, but to keep them out of societies’ view. Many mentally ill people are beaten because police think they are on drugs, or people mistreat them because they cant protect themselves. We have to take the responsibility of fighting for our rights because those people are like us and we could all at some point be like them.

I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say when I feel better.
10 days – no cigs!