My Response To "Mental Illness Doesn't Make You Special" Article

Yesterday an article was brought to my attention and after reading it I felt like I needed to make a response to it. I would like to state right off the bat that I do acknowledge that there is a serious issue in our society today with the romanticization of mental illness. Social media is filled with people either trying to get sympathy for their illness (that they most likely diagnosed themselves with) or with people who are bragging about their illnesses (that they have been diagnosed with). I think this does a horrible disservice towards people who genuinely struggle with mental illness and the stigma that surrounds it too. Nonetheless, I believe that Freddie deBeor makes some serious mistakes in this article and I intend to point them out. My intention as always is to educate people on mental health issues and if Freddie ever sees this I hope he knows that I do not hold any hard grudges against him. I understand that he is only addressing this issue because he sees a problem that is harming society and therefore it needs to be addressed. I commend him for him being willing to talk about an issue that most people would prefer to sweep under the rug. He opens his article with this introduction: 

"Marianne Eloise wants the world to know that she does not “have a regular brain at all”. That’s her declaration, on the very first page of her new memoir, Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking. The book catalogues her experience of a dizzying variety of psychiatric conditions: OCD, anxiety, autism, ADHD, alcohol abuse, seasonal affective disorder, an eating disorder, night terrors, depression. By her own telling, Eloise has suffered a great deal from these ailments; I believe her, and wish better for her. But she would prefer we not think of them as ailments at all. And that combination of self-pity and self-aggrandisement is emblematic of our contemporary understanding of mental health" 

I am not sure who Marianne Eloise is nor am I familiar with her book but I am interested in reading it now. I will like to point out that OCD, anxiety disorder, depression, alcoholism, SAD, and eating disorders are all very serious mental illness that should never be taken lightly. 

"There is, for example, a thriving ADHD community on TikTok and Tumblr: people who view their attentional difficulties not as an annoyance to be managed with medical treatment but as an adorable character trait that makes them sharper and more interesting than others around them. (They still demand extra time to take tests, naturally.) It’s also easy to come across social media users who declare how proud they are to be autistic; I’m glad they’re proud, but their repetitive insistencemakes me wonder who exactly they’re trying to convince, us or them." 

I do admit I do not like how so many people on Social Media sites such as Tik Tok and Tumblr do seem to perpetuate the romanticization of mental illness. I think when people do this it trivializes the real struggle that real people go through. However, I will also say that I do understand why people are wanting to come out of the woods to talk about their mental health struggles because we live in a society that consistently stigmatizes mental illness. It is because of this reason that people do need to be bold and talk about their struggles because raising awareness is the only thing that will make the stigma go away. It is not that we are proud of our illnesses and for him to suggest that just demonstrates that he he is in denial about the stigma that is so prevalent in the world. 

" Darker, there’s the world of “DID TikTok”. DID, dissociative identity disorder, is a profoundly controversial condition, once known as multiple personality disorder. Many serious experts question whether it exists at all; at the very least it’s incredibly rare. And yet thousands of adolescents have diagnosed themselves with the condition, and happily perform their various personalities for their social media followers, typically in ways that defy all established psychological understandings of the disorder." 

I do not know much about Dissociative Identity Disorder but I know that it is real and I am not aware of any serious mental health professional that questions whether or not it is real. However, it is rare and so these adolescents who are pretending to have it on social media need to be banned from the internet and they need to educated on mental illness. 

"It is perhaps comforting to see every last detail of one’s life as the product of some uncontrollable force. “I am this way because I was born this way,” Eloise writes, in a remarkably bald denial of personal responsibility. As a pawn of the various interior forces that do combat in her brain, she is adamant that there is nothing wrong with her, that her suffering is all in service to some deeper way to live, and that she is proud of the very conditions she asks us to treat as a perpetual get-out-of-jail-free card for her behaviour." 

It is a known medical fact that people can be born with mental illness so she is right when she says that she is "born this way". Also, mental illness can and often does lead someone into sinning. However, this by no means erases anyone from guilt. We are all guilty before God and there is no justification for us apart from Jesus Christ. But, the diagnoses can and does provide a proper context for one's behavior. 

"Eloise has clearly endured a great deal of hardship, but like her culture she seems to feel that this hardship can only be given meaning by being woven into a journey of self-actualisation. Eloise writes that her life is 'underpinned and ultimately made whole by obsession'. Can you imagine a sadder statement: an adult telling you that there is nothing to distinguish her or give her value but her psychiatric conditions, conditions she shares with millions of others?"

This is something that I strongly disagree with the mental health field about. Psychology says that man's ultimate goal is to "self-actualize" but the Gospel says that man's ultimate goal is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. As a matter of fact, when we focus on ourselves we will find nothing but guilt and condemnation but if we focus on Christ then we will truly be whole. John Calvin put it very well when he said that in order for us to truly know ourselves we must truly know God first. When we know who God is then we will understand who we are as creatures in relation to the Creator. We are not called to focus solely on ourselves but our narcissistic culture would have us to believe that. However, that logic is backwards. We were created for a bigger purpose and if we only see ourselves then we will miss that purpose. 

"Diagnosis is the Holy Grail of the neurodivergence narrative. Eloise fixates on hers and its quasi-mystical powers. No reader could doubt that her problems are real, but she seems to have treated getting diagnoses like a consumer on Amazon. She states flat out, on several occasions, that she went shopping for an autism diagnosis, went to doctors with the express intent of wringing one out of them. There was a time when self-diagnosis was understood to be unhealthy, and perhaps embarrassing, but this is a brave new world we’re living in now." 

Yes, self-diagnoses is unhealthy and even quite dangerous. We should never ever ever diagnose ourselves. I do not care how much you study Psychology and Psychiatry. If you are not a psychiatrist then you should not be diagnosing yourself or anyone for that matter. However, I will say this though that if a Psychiatrist says you have a mental disorder you most likely do. I know some people think that Psychiatrists do not know what they are doing but the field of Psychiatry has been around for over 20 years. So they have plenty of experience in treating people with mental illness nowadays. 

"Once enough people insist on mental illnesses as upbeat and fashionable lifestyle brands, then any of us who oppose it are guilty of the most grave sin of all, the sin of perpetuating stigma. It’s stigma to call autism a disorder, despite the fact that it renders some completely nonverbal and unable to care for themselves; it’s stigma to suggest that someone with ADHD bears any responsibility at all for problems at school or work; it’s stigma to speak the plain fact that people with psychotic disorders sometimes commit acts of violence under the influence of their conditions. It’s stigma, in other words, to treat those of us with mental illnesses as anything else than wayward children." 

First off, I would like to say that if you oppose mental health awareness then you are guilty of perpetuating the stigma. Stigma is a real thing. When someone cannot call off work for a sick day and instead they have to lie, then that is evidence of stigma. As for ADHD people, their illness makes is impossible for them to concentrate so that is why it seems like they are not paying attention. Secondly, mentally ill people (such as myself) are more of a danger to ourselves and then  we are a danger to others. 

"Stigma, that cartoon monster, has never been in the top 100 of my problems in 20 years of managing a psychotic disorder, but never mind; stigma is the ox to be gored in contemporary pop culture, and so we must fixate on it to the point that we sideline the health, safety and treatment of those with mental disorders. 

It saddens me deeply to see a fellow person with mental illness denying that stigma is a thing. If he truly believes that then I dare him to tell his boss at the last minute that he needs the day off for a mental health day off. Also, I dare him to explain his illness to a woman on their first date. I guarantee that he will not be willing to do these things, but why? It is because he knows that stigma against mental illness is still very much alive and by him denying this reality he is in essence doing a disservice for many people with mental illness around the world. 

"This is what it’s actually like to have a mental illness: no desire to justify or celebrate or honor the disease, only the desire to be rid of it. But the modern conception of neurodivergence (and disability activism generally) wants to have it both ways. Sometimes, people would prefer for you to think of their conditions as debilitating hindrances for which they may demand special dispensation. And sometimes they would like them to be seen as positive personality quirks that make them unique." 

I have absolutely no desire to be rid of my Schizoaffective Disorder because I honestly believe that mental illness displays the glory of God just like the man born blind in chapter 9 of the Gospel of John. For more of my thoughts on this please read this article: How My Schizoaffective Disorder Displays The Glory of God blog article. I think that is how we should view mental illness because it is much more than a debilitating disease but it is not a positive personality quirk either. We need to see mental illness as something that brings glory to Christ because everything was made by Him and for Him. That would include mental illness. 

"Today’s activists never seem to consider that there is something between terrible stigma and witless celebration, that we are not in fact bound to either ignore mental illness or treat it as an identity."

As someone who is a Christian Mental Health Advocate, I agree that mental illness is not something to be ignored or celebrated. Like I already said, I believe mental illness should be seen as something that glorifies God. As for identity, for Christians our identity is found in Jesus Christ alone not our mental illness. I am not a Schizophrenic but instead I am a Christian who struggles with Schizophrenia. 


"We might, then, have the courage to say that mental illness sucks, that there’s nothing good about it, that the efforts to bend it into some superpower of greater creativity or deeper living is sour grapes from those who can’t escape. We might help people like Eloise, rather than celebrating them as self-actualised girlbosses. We might have the wisdom to ease her suffering, while we patiently tell her that there’s nothing beautiful about it."


Since I see mental illness as something that brings glory to God, I will not say that it sucks. But, I will say that living with a mental illness is challenging. There are days where I do not want to get up out of bed and there are days where I can stay up for three nights in a row and still be very much animated. However, I do not think of my illness as something for me to be pitied over any more than someone should be pitied for having a broken arm. I think we need to look to Christ as our Lord and Savior instead of allowing our illnesses to define who we are. I do admit that I like how so many people are coming out and talking about their mental illness because it does raise awareness but when we do this we need to always point people to Jesus. He is the way, the Truth, and the Life and without Him we have nothing and are nothing. 

-David Lee Chu Sarchet
Christian Mental Health Advocate 

For 24 hour peer support, please call the Christ-Centered Mental Health ministry line at 567-343-3727 or email me at christmentalhealth@gmail.com

Lydia Sarchet: mrssccmh@gmail.com
Britton Garleb: britaingabriel@protonmail.com
Joe Roman: Twiztedmembrain@gmail.com
Scott AKA Johnny Kangaroo: scottsoconmhs@outlook.com
Dwayne McLeod: psyconatics@gmail.com
Veronica Talbot: vtalbot747@gmail.com
Amber Williams: shayneedm18@gmail.com
Chuck Ward: wcw50@aol.com
Sarah Olivia: sarahjesseolivia@gmail.com
Amber Marie: amarie0193@gmail.com
Zachary Uram: Netrek@gmail.com
 Joseph McDermott: jpmlovesjesus@live.com

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