Some people seem to use 'mental health' as an excuse for poor behaviour?

[Howlovely]

I've just seen on my local Facebook page a shouty post from what I assume is a local young woman having a go at the man who questioned whether she should be in a disabled parking space. She admitted that she is not a blue badge holder but "I have mental health" and it's none of this man's business. She had needed to go to the supermarket to get some food, which now she couldn't eat as she was so upset, so this man had caused her to starve and she hoped he was happy with himself. It really was a huge rant.
Personally, I think she's just an arsehole. Looking at some of her previous posts on the community page, she is an attention seeker and often details at length about her problems in order to get sympathy, favours and, sometimes, free stuff.
Mental health issues are, thank goodness, beginning to be taken more seriously, although there are still huge improvements to be made. AIBU to think, with (maybe slightly lessening, but still) stigma attached to MH issues, it is not helpful for people using (real or self-diagnosed) MH issues to behave like arseholes?

YABU to take a single example of one woman’s behaviour, and use it to generalise across the population. Some people are arseholes. Some people have mental health problems. The two are not mutually exclusive, and mental health has little enough support as it is without people adding to the stigma.

I don't believe I have generalised across the population? And in my previous posts I say pretty much the same thing as you have!

Yes, she did have a duty to behave better, unless her illness was so severe that she couldn't be expected to control herself, but that duty is only the flipside of our duty to respond to her with understanding. It's the same rule in both cases: Be kind, both in your behaviour and in your assessment of others' behaviour.

An awful lot of bad behaviour is caused by unhappiness, difficult feelings, etc, whether or not these amount to mental illness. And we probably would make things easier for ourselves as well as other people if we tried to keep this compassionately in mind when we deal with the bad behaviour.

Let her be. We don’t know her story.
When you are experiencing poor mental health it can be hard to take any form of perceived criticism and the man unintentionally upset her. She maybe expressed it in the wrong way but we don’t know what life is like for her at this time.
Have a wonderful Christmas.

I don't believe I have generalised across the population? And in my previous posts I say pretty much the same thing as you have!

But your post is titled "Some people seem to use 'mental health' as an excuse for poor behaviour", when it should really be - is this one woman using mental health as an excuse for poor behaviour. Either way, it gives the impression that this kind of behaviour could be attention-seeking, which only adds to the stigma of mental health. I agree with you that this particular woman sounds like a total nightmare! YANBU for finding her behaviour difficult, but I am just saying that it's not really fair to label it as a 'thing' that people sometimes do. It's specific to her.

I work mental health and I've met some lovely people who had mental health issues and some arseholes who had mental health issues. Mental illness doesn't discriminate who it affects. The arseholes would have been arseholes even if they had not had mental health issues and their behaviour would always have been rude/disrespectful as some people just are naturally that way inclined, sadly. I think its pretty obvious when someone is struggling to contain their mental illness in a public space and I would obviously have much empathy for them in such situations. I do think we need to strike a balance between having empathy and compassion for someone who is clearly struggling to fit in with social norms whilst at the same time, maintaining healthy boundaries of how we will allow others to treat us.

Having a mental illness isn't an "excuse" but it is a "reason" and I think its perfectly possible to be empathetic to the reason but still have a reasonable expectation that we should be treated with respect and dignity, like all humans deserve.

Regarding the blue badge- that situation couldn't be more clear - if you dont have a blue badge, then you shouldn't be parking in a blue badge space. If she continues to do that whilst out and about she'll end up getting tickets/fines, so there will be a consequence to her behaviour if she continues doing this.

Plan that’s all well and good but isn’t what the poster I responded to said.

Also you have no idea of my - or anyone here - experience of mental ill-health, either personally or supporting loved ones unless we choose to disclose it, so please don’t make assumptions that you know more than someone else. I can assure you that in my case you are almost certainly wrong.

Yanbu. It actually undermines the real challenges of having genuine mental illness. "Anxiety" is increasingly used as an explanation for basically being an arsehole.

I have bipolar and have had psychotic episodes where I had zero insight into my own behaviour - could well inagine myself behaving like this when in a bad place while 'passing' in other arenas...

Off the point, but it does irritate me when people talk about having mental health when they mean the opposite.

@Areyoufree - may be I should have worded the title more specifically. However, I see fairly often on here someone writing about questionable or sometimes just blatantly poor behaviour and many people will comment to the effect of, 'maybe they have mental health issues', which I find a bit unfair and sometimes insulting as, as I thought i got across in previous posts but maybe it didn't come across as clearly as I'd hoped, mental health issues don't necessarily make people behave in an appalling way. It's this kind of stigma that we need to remove. It's something quite close to my heart so it does annoy me a bit when some people, I feel, tend to throw it around.

It is possible to have MH issues and be an arsehole.
It is also possible to be disabled and be and be an arsehole.

The idea that those suffering from any illness or disability are exempt from being nasty or unkind is ridiculous.

She has a chronic health condition. Not a disability whereby she has obtained a blue badge. She was in the wrong, but clearly too unwell to recognise her behaviour at the moment. Hopefully someone close to her will recognise she is struggling. Perhaps her Facebook post was because she hasn't learnt to recognise when her illness is affecting her decision making.

But I do agree. My ex husband wold use his illness (SAD) to justify hacking into my email and posing as me on social media. Bollocks mate.

I'm missing the point but, assuming this lady cannot control her behaviour and isn't able to make rational decisions, then should she be driving on the roads?

Smiley
I agree.

YANBU. I totally agree. I appreciate that some people do have MH diagnoses and many people also struggle with their MH due to life events.
That said I can't stand the shouty idiots that know how rude they are, using this as an excuse to not have any manners or decency.
I will also add that I hate this trendy attitude that seems to be growing in schools. Rude, entitled, argumentative children who can't follow rules, instead of being told they have to follow the rules, are excused because they have MH issues (anxiety/autistic/you name it). No MH issues. Just rude and argumentative. Sorry if that's blunt. It just annoys me and lets call a spade a spade.

Has everyone going on about this woman “not being able to control her behaviour in public” clocked that the OP is talking about a Facebook post? The woman wasn’t running naked across the car park shouting about the voices in her head. Last time I checked, ranting on social media to try to garner sympathy wasn’t a serious MH condition. If it is, half the posters in AIBU need to get themselves to their GP pronto.

Iceberg tit
Plan that’s all well and good but isn’t what the poster I responded to said.

You responded to me and to my post. That is how I know what I said and what I meant. In addition, I made no assumptions about your mental health status, but you made a huge assumption about mine by assuming that I was not “one of the mentally ill.”

Some mental illnesses make people arseholes and it isn’t a choice they don’t get to choose what they do. Bpd is one such illness that isn’t treatable at all. I have it it’s not a choice to be mentally ill

Tit, I think you misunderstood me.
this woman “not being able to control her behaviour in public

No, I wasn’t saying it about this particular woman. I was responding to the OPs question:

“AIBU to think, with (maybe slightly lessening, but still) stigma attached to MH issues, it is not helpful for people using (real or self-diagnosed) MH issues to behave like arseholes?”

I was objectIng to the OP saying that people who have real MH issues can choose to or not to behave like an asshole.

I have schizophrenia and it is real. But I don’t know what is real when it hits me. So if I’m out in public behaving like an asshole talking to birds, staring at people and attacking lamp posts; it’s going to be because I really am actually mentally unwell not because I’m choosing to behave like an asshole. The OP should have not lumped real MH sufferers with imaginary/selfdiagnosed MH pretenders together in her AIBU question.

And yes, you can have both a mental disability and be an asshole, but you cannot be actually have real mental illness and be an asshole at the exact same time because when you’re ill, you don’t have choice or control.

I fully agree with you. Yes, having mental health issues (or anything actually), can mean you don't act the way you should. There's a difference though. Some do use any condition as an excuse to behave how they like and get a pass for it. Using it as a reason, and at the very least trying to understand how to behave different in future (even if that proves impossible, because it's not always), is totally not the same. It's not always easy to see the difference. I guess what I'm trying to say is if there's any self-reflection involved or not.
Most people don't want to be arseholes.

So it's not OK for her to behave like an 'arsehole' but it is OK for you to OP by posting about it on MN?

Are you always so judgemental?

God this thread is awful.

Such shitty attitudes and from those purporting to work in mental health.

My dc can't follow rules because of his mental health. I'm still waiting to hear back about a blue badge despite a long history of illness.

And generally people with mental illness are acting like people with mental illness not arseholes. 🙄

Midnight.
Well in my case self reflection would do nothing at all. I’m like a person possessed and often have no awareness or memory of what I have said or done during an episode. I cannot control when I lose myself or what “they” do with my body when I am ill. So self reflection? Lol. That works for the sane but not someone with schizophrenia.
All I can do is take my medication religiously and cross my fingers.

YANBU. Some people use the words ‘mental health’ without knowing what it means and use it as an excuse. Sometimes I tend to make people uncomfortable because I randomly burst into tears then I Feel the need to apologise and inform them I’m autistic and can’t help it! I know that’s different but people won’t take it seriously if others bandy ‘mental health’ as justification for bellend behaviour. It really grinds my gears too!