Sally Hands
MIND Millennium Award 1998
"Mental illness is no respecter of persons"
These pages record the recollections of friends who have endured mental illness.
For some reason politicians and journalists feel it is still acceptable to refer to
people with mental illness as ‘these people’. Often, as ‘these people who need to be
locked up’. Otherwise broadminded women and men on the radio and TV discuss the
‘problem’ of ‘these people’ in a way they would never condone in connection with
patients with a different illness or any other minority group.
If one reads the popular newspapers ‘these people’ are a danger to us normal
people and the media pander openly to public prejudices and fears about mental illness.
MIND reminds us that mental illness will affect 1 in 4 of us at some time in our
lives. It may mean being too sad and frightened to sleep or leave the house. It may
mean 2 years in hospital and needing to take drugs for years that sometimes work well
and sometimes make you fat, impotent, or give you liver, kidney or muscle damage.
If mental illness affects 1 in 4 of us, this is not a case of ‘them and us’. This
affects you and me.
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