ILLUSTRATION: THE GLOBE AND MAIL/GETTY IMAGES
Alexandra Shimo is an author, writing coach and educator with bipolar disorder.
The letter arrived in a manila envelope and was written on white paper in black 12-point Arial font. I hate Arial. It reminds me of what I’ve seen before.
The last letter like this – same font, paper, and envelope – came a year before, and it also suspended my driver’s license. I’d had a small fender-bender while parking, denting the back of my car as I reversed. There was no other damage. But, according to Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation, it, and my bipolar disorder, was sufficient to suspend my driving privileges for six months.
This time, there was no accident. No, my licence was suspended because I told my doctor I occasionally have difficulty falling asleep. When it is eleven o’clock or so, I meditate, or if that doesn’t work, take the lowest dose of a sleeping pill. Then, I sleep like a baby.
My doctor said that was characteristic of being bipolar. I countered that it was characteristic of the chaotic nature of life in the 21st century. But in Ontario, where I live, a physician must report when a patient has a condition that might pose a risk while driving, which is why I now held a second letter, in grotesque Arial font, informing me of the reason for this latest suspension was a “Mental Health Disorder.”
First, I’d like to inform the Ministry of Transportation that its language is a little out of date. No one in the know says, “mental health disorder” any more. We say, “mental health condition.” Or “mad.” Or if it’s bipolar, ADHD, autism, dyslexia and many others, we use the term “neurodiverse.” Or if you want to add a little pizzazz, “neurospicy.” Please don’t stigmatize what only needs to be described.
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These linguistic changes have shifted the conversation away from a DSM diagnosis and toward a socially inclusive label. They are the latest in a decades-long attempt to steer the conversation about disability away from discrimination and toward dignity. But to understand why the success of these changes has been limited, we have to return to the roots of where it all began, with the ancient Greeks. (Neurodivergence is sometimes defined as only neurodevelopmental conditions, such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia and dyscalculia; other definitions include conditions that are induced at least partly by trauma, such as bipolar and dissociative identity disorder. In this piece, I’ve used the latter definition.)
According to the ancient Greek biographer Plutarch, once a Spartan baby was born, the elders would inspect the child. If it was “deformed” or “weak” it would be taken to Mount Taygetus and left at a place called Apothetae (“the Deposits”) to die. Even our beloved Plato, often considered one of the founders of philosophy, espoused a eugenic ideal, advising that the children of “inferior” parents and those who are born “deformed” be stashed away in some “secret” and “hidden” place.
Versions of these ideas have persisted throughout history. In literature, there are archetypes with hidden disabilities, such as Bertha Mason, in Charlotte Brontë‘s Jane Eyre, who has some vague mental illness that is never diagnosed in the book (she is called a “lunatic”), yet it makes her unruly and violent, so she is hidden away in the attic. Or there’s Lady Audley of Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, whose madness is described in terms that suggest hysteria (voluble emotions, outbursts, etc.) and who pushes her husband down a well in an attempted murder. Afterward, she too is hidden away, sent to a mental asylum in Belgium.
Books like Otto Wahl’s Media Madness reveal how these damaging archetypes have continued into the present, and have become so common that most people don’t even realize that they are not normal, but a stereotype constructed around ignorance. While the language changed (from “hysterical” to “lunatic” to “crazy”), the same identifiers remain: animal-like, unreliable, rageful, and violent, show up in our neurodivergent characters again and again. It doesn’t matter where you turn, or what decade you are in, mad people are the murderers, the malingerers, the malicious.
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How this has affected my life is a common story: I have been fired from my job for taking a two-week mental health break, denied treatment by my family doctor, laughed at when I have tried to get psychiatric help (because the wait list at that time for an OHIP psychiatrist was seven years), and dismissed when I told my psychiatrist that a medication was causing speech problems (I was told it was all in my head). Indeed, there is a night-and-day difference in the type of care I receive when professionals know that I have a mental health disorder, and when they think I do not.
How this shows up is that those with mental health conditions have worse health, income, homelessness and rates of suicide. For example, a British study in 2017 in the Annals of Family Medicine research journal found that those with an intellectual disability were hospitalized at nearly three times the rate of the general population. In Canada, 60 per cent of the homeless report having a mental health issue. Among Canadians with annual incomes under $20,000, nearly 20 per cent reported a mental health disorder, which is nearly double the rate seen in higher-income groups.
Those who want to protest against such experiences may be shocked at how little protection Canadian law affords. Yes, there have been laws such as the Canadian Human Rights Act (1977), the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (2005), and the Accessible Canada Act (2019). But disability activists have long argued that a close reading indicates that in many circumstances, the law does not protect the disabled from discrimination, but the able-bodied from having to change.
That perhaps explains why many of those with disabilities, especially hidden disabilities, do not advocate for their rights, but instead try to “pass,” explains Geoffrey Reaume, associate professor in Critical Disability Studies at York University, and co-editor of Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies. According to a 2017 study published in Rehabilitation Psychology, only a fraction of those who have a disability identify as disabled; the rest are afraid of the stigma if people find out.
Consider the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). When it was enacted, it promised that Ontario would be barrier-free for the disabled in 20 years, i.e. by 2025. It was praised as being the first such provincial legislation in Canada.
Disability activists complained that two decades was too long to wait for progress: many would be dead by then. But we are still behind: 20 years later, it has not been “enacted to any significant extent,” says Prof. Reaume.
There is a grim fatality to these facts, as if it’s a foregone conclusion that those with disabilities will always live on the margins, often one step away from death. But if the neurodiversity movement has done anything, it’s that it has forced us to re-examine these tropes by pointing out that many of the barriers are external (like the cost of hiring a lawyer to take a human rights case to court), and not internal. Linguistic changes are designed to shift the grim inevitability of disability narratives, showcasing leaders, geniuses, and artists who have overcome their hidden disability, such as Sylvia Plath (bipolar poet), Nikola Tesla (autistic inventor) or Virginia Woolf (bipolar writer). In a just and equitable society, we expect our institutions, laws, processes, companies, and professionals to protect the vulnerable, i.e. provide “the mad” the tools to flourish.
I did get my driver’s licence back. My family doctor and my wife advocated for me, and after a few weeks, it was reinstated. I did not get my journalism job back after a two-week mental health break. I consulted with a lawyer, and she advised against a lawsuit, as it would be too costly to prove without documentation that the firing was explicitly for a mental-health reason.
These experiences led me to come forward, and tell the world that I am neurodivergent, bipolar and disabled. We need warriors if we are ever going to level this fight, which is why I’m stepping up. I’m tired of being seen as the mad woman in the attic.