A bit of an aside from the usual feminist stuff; but I’m not a one trick pony. This is an issue that’s been bugging me lately.

I know this may piss people off and I don’t care. I’m saying it.

Imagine you’re ill. Imagine  nobody believes you, imagine everybody tells you to ’snap out of it’ and ‘pull yourself together’. That what you have isn’t a ‘real’ illness. That you’re somehow faking it, that you’re not ‘really ill’.  Sound familiar?

It is precisely this scenario above which is what angers me so much about some of the offensive and ill informed opinions that hold sway in the M.E/CFS community about mental illness. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve read comments along the lines of ‘But I don’t have depression, I’m really ill!’ and ‘It’s not depression, I’m not making it up!’ and ‘M.E is a REAL illness, it’s not mental’. I do not for one second suggest M.E is depression, or that M.E is a mental illness. However mental illness is real, depression IS real, my depressive disorder has had a debilitating affect on my life, just like my M.E has.

I’ve had to deal with all the malingerer and ‘faking it’ misconceptions with my M.E and it hurts, to have to deal with them again but from the people who I figured would understand is even worse. To see sections the M.E community buy into the offensive stigma surrounding mental illness hurts me, it makes me angry. Yes M.E is NOT a mental illness but some of the comments I have read in the M.E community have been downright offensive towards those who have a mental illness, and while a miss diagnosis of any medial condition is to be avoided, the bile and fury with which people defends themselves against being seen as mentally ill, as ‘not really being ill’ is offensive. The fight to have M.E recognised as physical illness and not mental is all very well but it is often home to an underlying current of prejudice and misconceptions against mental illness, and it turn the mentally ill. Reinforcing the stereotypes that the mentally ill are something society is ashamed of, something they hide away.

So please think twice before posting things along the lines of ‘I’m relived that people have said I have M.E and I’m not just depressed ‘. or ‘I’m not mental ill I’m genuinely ill!”  As someone with a misunderstood illness, as someone who has all that ‘pull yourself together’ bullshit thrown at you you should understand, don’t do what you hate others doing to you. You’d find it offensive if someone said ‘Thank god I’ve been diagnosed with Lyme Disease (just using an example here) and it’s not just M.E , I’m actually really ill!’

Being mentally is IS being ‘really ill’ and it’s downright offensive to suggest otherwise.