Letter to the Editor

Here’s a link to the article to which I'm responding  - http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/02/waunakee_high_school_psych_ward.php#

1) I’m looking at an article that I found on the City Pages’ website reporting a Wisconsin High School dance team’s use of costumes that depicted the mentally ill. The problem I see here is that this dance team was adding to the strong stigma that surrounds suffering from a mental illness. It’s harmful to the students participating, as well as all that would be forced to watch this dance team’s routine. The coach goes as far as comparing the mentally ill to prison inmates. She is participating in destructive discourse by contributing to stereotypes about the mentally ill. This is especially harmful because what today constitutes as “mentally ill” has come to signify any mental problem, even ones far from the straightjacket image used in the dance routine. She is only reinforcing dated, discriminating ideas.

2) Draft:
There are many things wrong with the Waukanee high school dance team dressing up as mentally ill patients in a psychiatric ward. Coach Erin Cotter is passing along the stigma associated with suffering from a mental illness to a whole new generation when she deems it acceptable behavior to use them as a costume. She is portraying mental illness as being something that must be “other people’s problem”. Did she ever stop to think about how prevalent mental illness is in each of our own lives? While not all of us may know someone in psych ward, the image represents each that deals with mental issues, even the smallest of chemical imbalances. What if the very girls doing the dress up have mentally ill parents? Or how about themselves?
Cotter’s defense called upon other teams, who in the past have dressed up in orange jumpsuits to reflect prison inmates. So, she says, what’s the big deal about the mentally ill? The big deal, Erin, is that you are placing two very different groups of troubled people into the same category, and that is not fair. You are claiming that people who have been mentally ill enough to be admitted inpatients are identical to convicted murderers and rapists. While the latter too most likely have their own set of issues, you have allowed the former to be seen as taboo and dangerous. Cotter’s ethics are out of line.