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Mental Health
Also written: Mental illness, Mental disorder
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At a glance
Source-by-source
“it is therefore paramount to use people-first language, to reject a purely “medical” framing of disability, to always use disability and mental health terminology accurately, and to use narratives that support people with disabilities in building power …”
SumOfUs treats mental health alongside disability under one anti-ableism framework: use people-first language, use mental health terminology accurately, and avoid deploying it metaphorically — especially as an insult or flippantly.
“The most common example is the pervasive use of the word “crazy” or “insane” as a pejorative. For people struggling with mental health challenges, it can be exhausting to hear a medical issue be used as shorthand for every piece of bad news.”
Sierra Club flags casual use of “crazy” and “insane” as a pejorative as a common, often-unconscious form of ableism, asking communicators to consider what such shorthand implies about people living with mental health conditions.
“Refer to an individual's mental illness only when it is relevant to the story and you're confident there is a medical diagnosis. Whenever possible, specify the specific illness a person has rather than mental illness in general. Always refer to someone with a mental illness as a person first.”
NCDJ treats “mental illness” as an umbrella term that remains in wide medical use, while recommending people-first language, specificity over the general label, and reference to a person's condition only when relevant and backed by a medical diagnosis. It notes that some prefer alternatives such as “mental health experience.”
“Reporting on things like the mental health and criminal record of the victim/survivor should also be done with extreme caution and discernment.”
Color of Change's Black survivors guide warns against surfacing a survivor's mental health history in coverage of sexual violence, treating it as one of the details that can be weaponized to discredit a victim/survivor and urging extreme caution and discernment.
“Unless you have a determination by a psychiatrist or psychologist that the subject of a story has been clinically diagnosed with a mental disorder, avoid speculating about the issue. … When a diagnosis is confirmed, specify the condition rather than referring to general “mental illness.””
The Diversity Style Guide cautions against speculating about a subject's mental health absent a clinical diagnosis, and — where one is confirmed — prefers naming the specific condition over the general label “mental illness.”
Synthesis
The sources converge on two rules and rarely disagree. The first is don’t borrow mental-health words as metaphors or insults. Sierra Club names the most common case — “crazy” and “insane” as throwaway pejoratives — and observes that for people living with mental health conditions it is “exhausting to hear a medical issue be used as shorthand for every piece of bad news.” SumOfUs folds the same rule into its anti-ableism framework: use mental health terminology accurately, and don’t deploy it flippantly or as an insult.
The second rule is a discipline around diagnosis and relevance. NCDJ and the Diversity Style Guide both insist that you not speculate about a person’s mental health without a clinical diagnosis; that when a diagnosis is confirmed you name the specific condition rather than the catch-all “mental illness”; that you reference it only when it’s relevant to the story; and that you keep the person first. Color of Change extends the relevance rule into survivor coverage from a different angle — a survivor’s mental health history is exactly the kind of detail that gets surfaced to discredit them, so it warrants “extreme caution and discernment.”
There is little chronological drift in this entry: from 2016 through 2023 the guidance holds steady. What varies is the vantage point. Language advocates (SumOfUs, Sierra Club) come at it from “don’t use it as an insult,” newsroom guides (NCDJ, DSG) from “don’t speculate, and be specific,” and intersectional survivor guidance (Color of Change) from “don’t weaponize it.”
Audience notes
- Journalists and editors. Don’t speculate about a subject’s mental health without a clinical diagnosis. When one is confirmed, name the specific condition rather than “mental illness,” reference it only when relevant, and write people-first.
- Communicators and advocates. Drop “crazy,” “insane,” and similar terms used as pejoratives. The objection isn’t about politeness; the metaphor equates a medical condition with everything that’s gone wrong.
- Survivor and violence coverage. Treat a survivor’s mental-health history as weaponizable. Color of Change’s standard is extreme caution before it appears in a story at all.
Related terms