I recently experienced an acquaintance that’s a mental health professional call and state an individual as “he’s mental health”...

Such a statement gobsmacked me... it ridiculous and incorrect on many levels...

This was in relation to an individual they read in a newspaper that had seriously harmed a family... I found the comment awful and made me question what some people think of mental illness... (It doesn’t help that newspapers often highlight, focus and spread mental illness as the culprit without address all the other possible influencing factors, motivations, reasons, independent individual aspects, components, and societal failures)...

Her statement is incorrect on many levels... ‘Mental health, isn’t Mental Illness... We all have mental health but that doesn’t necessarily mean we all have mental illness’...

‘He is mental health’... so that means that’s what he is in his entirety?... That’s like saying ‘He is a dog’ instead of saying ‘He has a dog’... It’s logically incorrect and absurd! However this flows under the radar? Even within mental health communities? I just find it perplexing... How can people perceive people simply as labels and not as individual complex human beings? 

I’m frustrated of this dumbed down way of thinking whereby people don’t question what they read, what they believe and what they say...  I’m annoyed at people grouping characteristics and assigning an identity for all within that group... it’s pure tribalism... It’s not conducive to solving individual and societal issues... 

Rant over but I do find it frustrating... Is this stigma? I don’t feel I’m very good at recognising and acknowledging stigma because often the very people who spread such trite are ignorant, unaware and rather clueless so the comments fly by me as I’m rather shocked and disbelieve what I just heard then doubt myself...