I can think of three monumental, historic events that have happened in my lifetime. The fall of the Berlin Wall. 9/11. The election of our first black president. And now a fourth. This.
The Supreme Court decided to allow same sex couples to marry in all 50 states.
It’s earth-shattering. Epic. Historic. When I first heard, just thinking about it gave me goosebumps. Even throughout the day. It means so much to me and my friends.
The plight of the mentally ill is not unlike that of the gay population.
Like any minority group, sometimes the mentally ill feel like they are second-class citizens. Gays and lesbians for the most part used to feel misunderstood. Ostracized. Stigmatized. In some parts of the country and in certain circles, they still do. But for those of us with bipolar and other mental illnesses, we are also stigmatized and demonized to the extreme.
On this monumental occasion, I feel the need to tell my personal story of being gay.
I was a late bloomer. Being gay was so taboo that I didn’t even admit to myself that I was gay until senior year of college when I was 20. Even then I kept it to myself. Now, there are young kids coming out in high school or earlier. It was in 2001 that I came out to my family. Here’s why.
I moved to New York a couple weeks prior to 9/11. My first job out of college was at AOL, writing about arts and entertainment. When the twin towers fell, I, like many, felt like the world could end at any moment. I had never been in love before. I didn’t know what romantic love felt like. I had never been intimate with a man before. It was time to address my sexuality.
I met my first boyfriend at AOL. My first real kiss happened at a gay bar in the East Village in Manhattan. I was 21 years-old. He became my first boyfriend.
I finally told my sister I was gay when I came home for Thanksgiving that year. She pressured me to tell my parents, which I did on St. Patrick’s Day, 2001. My dad was totally cool with it. My mom cried. She actually asked me, “Are you gonna get AIDS now?” A little while later, my mom finally came to terms.
And look how far we’ve come? From the stereotype that all gay men have AIDS to marriage equality in less than 20 years.
What she also said when she was crying is “You’ll never be able to get married.” She felt sorry that her one and only son would never get to participate in the institution of marriage.
Well now I can. And it will be recognized nationwide. My gay brothers and sisters – from the West Coast to the Bible Belt to the liberal Northeast and everywhere in-between – they can get married too.
And the sugar on top? It’s Gay Pride weekend.
At Gay Pride Parades across America, gays, lesbians, and our straight friends will celebrate the ruling this Sunday. This happens 46 years after the Stonewall riots of 1969, in which police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village. That night, Stonewall’s gay patrons fought back. And every year since then, on the last Sunday in June – coinciding with the anniversary of Stonewall – we’ve held parades to celebrate our pride and personhood.
This year, we will salute this victory for civil rights, and the fact that we are no longer second-class citizens.
Pop culture has paved the way for this victory. It has led the way on gay civil rights.
NBC’s Will & Grace was avant-garde for 1998 in that it featured two gay men as lead characters. Showtime’s Queer as Folk was the very first show to be devoted entirely to gay and lesbian culture.
Even though these shows featured stereotypes, they allowed for straight people to be exposed to the gay experience from the comfort of their living rooms.
Current show Modern Family on ABC features a gay family – a male couple with an adopted daughter.
Movies raise gay visibility, too. Take Brokeback Mountain – the touching story of two cowboys in love starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. It won three Oscars, including Best Director for Ang Lee.
Milk, the biopic of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, won two Academy Awards including Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Sean Penn.
Like gay culture, mental illness has been the subject of many movies and TV shows.
Shows like the Emmy-winning Homeland – starring Claire Danes as a bipolar CIA agent – seriously break down barriers. She plays Carrie Mathison – a strong woman with high esteem and a position of authority living a normal life. And she’s bipolar. Her character is a role model for us, and while some of us aren’t as lucky to be fully functioning like Mathison, many of us are. Homeland will commence its fifth season this fall.
Silver Linings Playbook was the breakout serious role for Bradley Cooper and featured an Oscar-winning performance by Jennifer Lawrence as a widow with borderline personality disorder. It portrays the struggle of Pat (Cooper), his bouts with bipolar disorder, and a love story with Tiffany (Lawrence). Silver Linings shows the travails of what it’s like being bipolar, and how one character was able to get stable and stay that way.
There are also television shows that perpetuate stereotypes about being mentally ill. But the positive portrayals do make a difference.
And a brand-new film in theaters now – Infinitely Polar Bear – stars Mark Ruffalo as a bipolar father taking care of his kids while their mom goes to New York for graduate school.
This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to TV and movies about mental illness.
These movies and television shows are constantly fighting the mental illness stigma.
Here are three types of stigma that we the mentally ill are fighting against.
- People think we are crazy.
People don’t understand that with medication and therapy, we can be near-normal. Medication isn’t a panacea, but it does help us function like normal human beings.
- People think our illness is our fault.
Especially when there is a dual diagnosis involved, people think we brought it upon ourselves. That person is crazy because they drank or drink too much. Or took or take too many drugs. These are diseases. And the substance abuse manifests because of our psychiatric disease.
- People think we are dangerous.
People with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or psychosis, are 2.5 times more likely than the general population to be attacked, mugged or raped. The overwhelming majority of us are nonviolent.
These stigmas affect a heck of a lot of folks.
There are 42.5 million people or 18 percent of Americans who suffer from mental illness. That’s nearly one in five. Compare that to the gay population. Only 7 percent of Americans are gay.
Unlike the gay community, we aren’t seeking any particular rights. We already have mental health parity – which means mental healthcare must be seen as the same as medical treatment in the eyes of the insurance companies. What we are seeking is respect and human decency.
Harvey Milk – the first gay man elected to public office in San Francisco in 1977 famously said this: “Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with,” he said. “Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and all. And once you do, you will feel so much better… Break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters.”
This is what must happen in our mental health community. There should be no shame. Rather than tumbling into obscurity and hiding in the shadows, we who are mentally ill must take a cue from the gay rights movement.
Coming out changes minds. And we can accomplish what the gay rights movement has done by coming out ourselves. We can gain respectability, hope, and understanding. And when the time comes, there will be victory for us too.
