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Mental Account: It is our duty to integrate people with mental disabilities into society and employment
On the occasion of International Mental Health Day, it is time to talk about the quarter of a million Israelis living with mental disabilities.
Those who face discrimination, exclusion and ridicule on a daily basis, those who are called "mentally ill", those who are ashamed to treat their disabilities.
It's time we learned to stop treating them as transparent
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Mental Health
People with disabilities
Welfare
Oren Hellman
Sunday, 10 October 2021, 08:36 Updated: 08:39
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My uncle, Elka (Eliyahu), passed away 26 years ago in a closed ward in a psychiatric hospital. Elka was a secret. He was hidden. He had a hard time. Dealing with the transparent mental disability was impossible. The stigmas, sometimes the ridicule and harsh reactions from the environment, the lack of acceptance and the lack of understanding were immense. Unbearable.
But that was almost a hundred years ago, when he was born. And what is happening today?
Today marks World Mental Health Day around the world. Israel has not devoted a day to the subject, but a bill of MK Michal Digger and other MKs determines it should be noted Israel in different ways.
Towards this day, it is important to know: Israel Haim million people with functional disabilities severe, including 250 thousand with mental disabilities (these data are reported, the number may well be much higher.) and we, who do not use psychiatric pills today?
So today scoff, do not accept and exclude people from society as mentally disabled uncle Alk'h.And it's only getting worse.
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More than a million people with disabilities.
Mazor Mental Health Medical Center (Photo: official website, Photo: Yaron Kaminski / Haaretz)
Unfortunately, the main discrimination is the state, which prevents people with mental disabilities, all mental disabilities, from working in certain workplaces - for example in daycare centers. The Regulations for the Supervision of Dormitories (Maintenance of Children in a Regular Dormitory), 1965 stipulate in section 22C that "a worker who is mentally ill will not be employed in a dormitory. Not every mental disability is dangerous to the environment, and not every mental disability is automatically violent - this generalization It is mostly ignorance, and may be appropriate for the 1960s, certainly not appropriate for 2021.
But the Israeli public is also discriminatory and stigmatizing towards people with mental disabilities. According to a 2018 survey, 67% of the public said they were reluctant to participate in group leisure activities It also said that 48% said they would not agree to live with a person with a mental disability or autism, and
67%
said that they would
shy away from sitting in cafes or restaurants that employ people with a mental disability.
The main difference between a mental disability and other disabilities is that it is a transparent disability, one that is not seen.
There are those who even call those who face it with stigmatized mockery nicknames as "crazy."
"Who did not know I was at a psychiatrist"
We live in the days when anyone who disagrees is called "mentally ill" or "mentally ill," in the days when every extreme act becomes a result of mental illness, in the days when disabilities are used to mock and pass criticism. In the days when people who take psychiatric medication are ridiculed in order to balance themselves mentally.
All we, our children and also people with disabilities hear, is that a person with a mental disability is abnormal, sick, screwed up and immoral. There are even politicians who hint, or even explicitly say about someone who is unworthy, because of "mental illness." By the way, there is no such thing as mental illness. It is true to say mental disability or mental disorder.
The exclusion, ridicule, stigma and discrimination on our part towards mental disability, all these make people ashamed and hide the limitation. They prefer not to be diagnosed, or to receive treatment, "so that they do not know I have been to a psychiatrist" and "that it should not be recorded that I have a psychotic personality."
Anyone who does not treat cancer dies from it.
Those who do not treat mental disabilities may also die from suicide, anorexia and more.
On days like these - we owe a mental account.
Because we learned nothing.
The main discriminator is the state.
Jerusalem Employment Service (Photo: Flash 90, Yonatan Zindel)
We have not learned that mental disabilities can be medicated and that balance can be reached. We have not learned that mental disability is not a "mental illness." We have not learned that people with mental disabilities can integrate into society, work and live a normal life like us. We have not learned that it is forbidden to make fun of people with disabilities. And we have not learned that none of us and his relatives are immune from mental disabilities.
And most of all, we did not learn that it is possible and obligatory to accommodate and integrate people with disabilities, including mental disabilities. The disability may be "transparent" - but we should not treat someone with a disability as if it were transparent.
So before you think or express yourself stigmatically about people with mental disabilities, think that it makes people ashamed of their disability and themselves and creates de-legitimization of a widespread phenomenon - something that prevents diagnosis, as well as balancing treatment. And those who refrain from treating their mental disability because of social stigmas - do not raise it, but strengthen and aggravate it.
Think about how the parents and siblings of someone with a mental disability feel. And avoid.Just avoid it.
Oren Hellman is the founder of the Facebook page and LinkedIn has an equal chance of integrating people with disabilities into work and society and the father of a girl studying in special education.
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