Dear Gerald
> Yes, Paul's post really touched a nerve for me. I have nightmares about
> the sort of therapists and social workers that the current systems will
> release on the world.
I don't have 'nightmares' about the newspeak that we have to use, or
the abbreviations as such. I think that we have always had such things.
A long time ago when I, and the world was younger, I was a nurse. I
trained in psychiatry where I learned about mental illness, later, when
this term became unacceptable we started to use the term 'mental
health'. Following my psychiatric training I undertook general nurse
training (now called 'adult nursing') where I worked on a medical ward.
One day the ward sister (now called a ward manager) asked me to
'special' a patient with 'MI'. I asked her if some other nurse could do it
as I wanted to learn about general illness. (I'm sure that, by now, you
can see the 'punchline'?) She asked me what I meant, so I told her that I
had done my psychiatric nurse training and therefore I knew about
mental illness; to which she replied that 'MI' stood for 'Myocardial
Infarction'.
As I said earlier - we have always had abbreviations and we have
always changed the names of things when we think that it takes on a
negative image (look at the word 'spastic' as another example). Perhaps
however, it is not changing the name that matters it is the negative
perception of such people that TRULY needs to be changed. But, I'm
afraid that that's a job for a higher being than me!
Best wishes
Paul Carney
Paul Carney
Senior Lecturer
School of Health & Social Science
Coventry University
Priory St
Coventry England CV1 5FB
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