I want to put this out there, because it’s something that I’ve observed for a while now. As someone who’s studying in the field of psychology and has a bachelor’s degree in it, as well as has schizophrenia, mental illness is not an excuse for acting like a terrible person. Thread

This thread is not directed at any singular person. Let’s make this clear. What I want to get at with this thread is how I’ve observed several people who have made excuses for doing terrible things in the name of their mental illness when it’s clearly unrelated to the illness.

Labels in mental health can sometimes be useful when trying to determine paths for treatment, but blaming your terrible and conscious actions on your mental illness not only makes you look bad, it often fosters stigma against people who share those labels.

Seeing people dodge the consequences of their harmful actions by blaming it on a mental illness when it’s clearly unrelated leaves me quite frustrated, as I’ve had experiences where I was stuck in deep delusions and later had to apologize due to the influence of my illness...

...only for people to doubt me and my illness and demand that I need to prove my illness to them through things such as showing medications to prove to them that I was being influenced by my illness before they would accept my apology.

Obviously, having to jump through such hoops for forgiveness from people I’ve considered friends is not only cruel, it’s indicative of an environment these bad faith actors have created. Whether that was directly or indirectly is up to debate. Bottom line, it needs to stop.