“Patients” is a virtue

John McManamy, oddly enough, is also wondering about the word “consumer,” and he’ll be talking about the issue soon on his blog. John and I are very in sync, apparently. I told him if I were still plagued by magical thinking (damn psychosis!) I’d believe our timing was a sign of something—though I’m not sure what.

Anyway, you have to read McManamy’s entire post, because it’s really good, but here are a few tidbits until the full post is up:

I have a chronic and debilitating medical illness that affects the largest and most metabolically active organ in the body. Left untreated, I have a one in five chance of my life coming to a precipitous end. The lifetime costs of my illness may be as high as $600,000, which includes lost employment. The medical complications of my illness affect every organ system in the body and will result in my dying seven years earlier than someone without my illness.

Don’t call me a consumer. That is a gross insult. I am a patient. The person who treats me has an MD. I will be taking medications the rest of my life.

Why are names so important? People who think mental illness is not real and who oppose all forms of psychiatry love the term consumer. … The euphemism, consumer, after all strongly suggests that we are not real patients with a real medical illness. … But only true medical “illnesses” draw top research dollars. According to a 2003 report by the Treatment Advocacy Center and Public Citizen, the NIH in 1999 spent $2,240.88 per AIDS/HIV patient in researching AIDS/HIV and $476.26 per lung cancer patient in researching lung cancer. For schizophrenia, the per patient figure was $74.95, bipolar disorder $25.95, and depression $18.60.

To add insult to injury, the DSM-IV classifies all serious mental illnesses as “disorders,” as if to suggest we have no more than some kind of head cold. No wonder your health plan and our public health system (such as it is) treats a disease of the heart with far more respect than a disease of the brain.

[Photo of McManamy by Leigha Cohen]

liz | 1:04 PM | Uncategorized