Why is talking about stigma never okay?

[Locut0s]

3. I understand and empathise De Leonist. But there's also a hidden danger in thinking this way...

I could not agree more that the mentally ill are stigmatized, shunned, hated, feared and treated like shit. And I agree it's disgusting and must stop. We have it bad enough as it is suffering with our illnesses without having to deal with being ostracised by the world. We shouldn't have to worry about getting strange and fearful looks, losing friends, and even losing our jobs over commiserating with others about our problems.

However there is a hidden danger in putting too much energy into thinking of this as an us vs them problem. Unlike other marginalized groups, blacks and the LGBT community, that we sometimes compare ourselves too, it's not totally correct to say "there is nothing wrong with me, I'm perfectly ok". Looking at it from this point of view one risks taking our diagnosis and permanently stamping ourselves with it. You risk going from being a person suffering from depression to being "one of the depressed". One leaves room for hope, change, light at the end of the tunnel, the other is a permanent label. Indeed there is nothing wrong with being depressed any more than being black and one should not be discriminated against any more than the other. But there's no doubt that depression is an illness, or state of mind, we should want to be desperately free of, not so for "blackness" or "queerness". Instead of it being too much "us vs them" we should see this much more as an "us vs us" fight. After all that is truly where our energies are best focused, getting out of the hell holes we have found ourselves in.