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2005-10-11 - 13:45 Why couldn't it have been cancer? People care about people with cancer. They send cards to their friends with cancer. They visit them. They raise money for strangers with cancer. When someone has cancer, people help. When someone has mental illness, people wish that peson would just go away. If you tell someone you have cancer, that person will likely still love you. If you tell them you have a mental illness, the "you" who was a competent, smart person a minute before becomes the object of hushed conversations when you're not around and manages to go far down in people's eyes very quickly. No one would tell a person with cancer that they were not appropriate for leadership positions because he or she had the illness, but when the same person is hospitalized for a mental disorder, suddenly she becomes a danger to the people around her.
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