Psychiatric Liberation/Language and "Mental Illness"

Language is an important feature of psychiatric liberation. How a statement is structured can determine its true-false modality in logic. How we use language communicates our bias, motives and agendas. Words are powerful units of statements. Old, inaccurate descriptors, along with the inappropriate use of medical diagnoses, perpetuate negative stereotypes and reinforce an incredibly powerful attitudinal barrier. And this invisible, but potent, attitudinal barrier, not the diagnosis itself, is the greatest obstacle facing individuals with disabilities. When we make the diagnosis the most important thing about a person, we devalue and disrespect him/her as an individual.

Person-First Language

When using person-first language, we acknowledge that disabilities are not persons and they do not define persons, so we do not replace person-nouns with disability-nouns. We avoid referring to persons as: the aphasic, the schizophrenic, stutterers, cleft palates, or the hearing impaired. Further, emphasize the person, not the disability, by putting the person-noun first. Instead we use: people with cleft palate, the lawyer who has dyslexia, persons who stutter, the speech of children with language impairment or the speech of individuals who stutter. We avoid saying using such words as adjectives such as: the cleft palate children, the hearing impaired client, the dyslexic lawyer or the retarded adult.