So there’s a BuzzFeed article called “How People Treat Mental Illness Vs. How they Treat Physical Illness.” The authors of the article/post/whatever mean well, but I don’t think it would be going out on a limb to say they probably don’t have a lot of experience with chronic illnesses, invisible physical illnesses, or any long-term physical illness.

Like, part of the link text is “have you tried herbal tea,” and that is the exact same type of shit people say to people with diabetes and (probably) to folks with things like fibromyalgia.

Lots of physical illnesses get really similar types of bullshit thrown at them as is thrown at mental illnesses. Assumptions that the illness is some how the person’s own fault. Assumptions that they’re just using their condition as an excuse. Assumptions and accusations that they’re making it up/that it isn’t real.

And a lot of times, and I mean A. LOT. OF. TIMES. mental illnesses like anxiety and depressive disorders are co-morbid with physical illnesses, especially chronic ones. It can partly be the changes that the chronic illness causes, and it can be partly because of having to deal with everything the physical illness brings, and sometimes it can be any number of other factors, because seriously, it is a WONDER that anyone ends up anywhere near textbook “normal” because there are so many ways that the human body can have trouble functioning.

Articles like this are probably meant to make Joe and Jane Average (who are assumed to be not mentally ill and probably not physically ill) think about how they interact with others.

But a lot of what it ends up doing is pitting people with physical illness and people with mental illness against each other, with no real acknowledgement that a lot of people are living with both kinds.