“I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Chicago 1966
Category Archives: Resources
I’m 17 — Kate Simonds
Why Invest Common Sense, Passion, and Persistence in Citizen Advocacy?
Why Invest Common Sense, Passion, and Persistence in Citizen Advocacy?
· The images created about people with disabilities by the media, human service efforts, and in literature often create and support negative, stereotypical attitudes. From these attitudes comes our conscious or unconscious action or our choice not to act. Personal relationships between people allow us to reassess our stereotypes.
· Many people who are seen and treated as negatively different will need to be protected from conscious and unconscious prejudice and discrimination.
· Abuse and neglect exist in all human services effort. The involvement of ordinary citizens in relationships with people who have disabilities is one way to monitor and decrease this reality.
· The most predictable outcome of current human services spending and practice is organized segregation, which has kept people apart and unknown to one another. Personal relationships between people help to overcome fear, myth, and discomfort that comes from people not knowing one another. Continue reading Why Invest Common Sense, Passion, and Persistence in Citizen Advocacy?
Why You Should Never Use The Term ‘The Mentally Ill’
Why You Should Never Use The Term ‘The Mentally Ill’
By Jeff Grabmeier MedicalXpress.com January 26, 2016
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-01-term-mentally-ill.html
Even subtle differences in how you refer to people with mental illness can affect levels of tolerance, a new study has found.
In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers found that participants showed less tolerance toward people who were referred to as “the mentally ill” when compared to those referred to as “people with mental illness.”
For example, participants were more likely to agree with the statement “the mentally ill should be isolated from the community” than the almost identical statement “people with mental illnesses should be isolated from the community.”
These results were found among college students and non-student adults – and even professional counselors who took part in the study.
The findings suggest that language choice should not be viewed just as an issue of “political correctness,” said Darcy Haag Granello, co-author of the study and professor of educational studies at The Ohio State University.
“This isn’t just about saying the right thing for appearances,” she said. “The language we use has real effects on our levels of tolerance for people with mental illness.”
Granello conducted the study with Todd Gibbs, a graduate student in educational studies at Ohio State. Their results appear in the January 2016 issue of The Journal of Counseling and Development.
Continue reading Why You Should Never Use The Term ‘The Mentally Ill’
Remove the Labels