My good fortune is not that I’ve recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.

now just calm down” almost inevitably have the opposite effect on the person you are speaking to.

Stigma against mental illness is a scourge with many faces, and the medical community wears a number of those faces.

Mental illness” is among the most stigmatized of categories.’ People are ashamed of being mentally ill. They fear disclosing their condition to their friends and confidants-and certainly to their employers.

No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental...