Rosalynn Carter has long been an advocate for mental health and recently published a new book with Susan K. Golant and Kathryn E. Cade entitled “Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis.”
The 83-year old former First Lady was at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on Columbia Point on Sunday to discuss it.
As she has in the past, Carter mentioned that since mental institutions have fallen out of fashion, prisons have become caregivers to much of the mentally ill population. She said now that the causes of mental illness are increasingly understood to be physiological, a “biological stigma” has replaced a moral stigma but families still hide it, often to the detriment of the sufferers.
Carter shared the stage of Stephen Smith Hall with Dr. Peter Kramer, professor of psychiatry at Brown University and author of “Listening to Prozac.”
She said (Rosalynn Carter) now that the causes of mental illness are increasingly understood to be physiological, a “biological stigma” has replaced a moral stigma but families still hide it, often to the detriment of the sufferers.
And of course the caveat is “she said.”
“Stigma” is popular word with her, she manages to place in in the media with ease. Perhaps it is because she is 83, perhaps because she is a former first lady. She feeds a lingering public appetite for “stigmas,” and most being off limits, has settled on this one.
Fortunately fewer and fewer of us are buying it. We, having to educate ourselves, know that illness is illness, regardless of what language someone wants to direct at one or another illness.
Carter mentioned that since mental institutions have fallen out of fashion
I sincerely hope the “fallen out of fashion” remark regarding mental institutions did not actually originate from her lips. It sounds far too much like segregation “has fallen out of fashion.”
Both fell to civil rights.
Harold A. Maio, retired mental health editor
[email protected]