Retailers Asda, Tesco and Amazon advertised their 'Mental Patient' and 'Psycho Ward' Halloween costumes recently. The costumes boast fake blood, meat cleavers, boiler suits, jaw restraints, and you can 'complete the look' with a machete!
Clearly as a 'mental patient' I was shocked by this. Mental illness has enough stigma around it without needing halloween costumes to add to it. So inspired by the responses on twitter I thought i'd show you what a 'mental patient costume' looks like... So as you can see here is a picture of me.
Please note that there is a lack of meat cleavers and machetes, no blood and nothing out of the ordinary. There is on the other hand Jeans and a jumper that's far too big for me. Others posting similar images of themselves on twitter include them wearing, suits, t-shirts, dresses, leggings and well the same clothes a normal person wears! They also aren't holding dangerous objects. And just to clarify if you've never seen us mental patients before we don't actually have blurred faces. Shocking, I know.
We don't wear clothes that show we're mentally ill, we don't go around with warning signs and we don't walk around with meat cleavers. Mental illness doesn't have a certain look to go with it, you can't see them and you certainly can't distinguish a mentally ill person by what they are wearing. Just in case you didn't know that...
No comments:
Post a Comment