Oh, how far away we are from knowing how to relate to people with mental illnesses.
Usually, when I see tweets and Facebook posts about “mental health awareness,” I breathe a heavy sigh. Online reactions to Kanye West’s presidential campaign rally in South Carolina on Sunday (July 19) are exactly why.
Kanye, who has bipolar disorder, was apparently symptomatic as he spoke about topics as wide-ranging as slavery and abortion.
He made a false claim Harriet Tubman didn’t free any slaves but rather “just had the slaves go work for other white people.” He was in tears as he told the crowd he and his wife Kim Kardashian had considered aborting their first child North West. He was angry when talking about how he wasn’t on the company boards of either adidas or Gap and threatened to cut ties with both companies if that didn’t change.
An anonymous source told People Kanye has been experiencing recent episodes of mania and depression related to his disorder. Many on Twitter concurred and pleaded for Kanye to get the help he needs.
Others ridiculed Kanye for his behavior, apparently being entirely dismissive of the fact his actions are fueled by his disorder.
Everyone’s a progressive until it comes to people with mental illnesses.
Kanye is an easy target for the ignorant and a flavor of the day for “woke” people on Twitter. The former shows how clueless many still are when it comes to mental illnesses, while the latter displays we’ve at least made some progress.
But here’s the thing: both reactions are misguided.
Kanye is not a jerk, joke or jackass. He’s sick. And there is only one person who can help Kanye West right now — Kanye West.
Kardashian told Vogue in 2019 medication wasn’t an option for Kanye because it changes who he is. This is a valid complaint. Medications make some people feel “flat” or dull. They can help alleviate symptoms but can also have side effects including weight gain, fatigue and nausea.
Medication is not a cure-all. Prescribing psychiatric medication is largely trial-and-error, and it can take up to several years to find an effective combination.
People also need to keep in mind Kanye is 43 years old. He’s not of a generation that’s particularly kind to those with mental illnesses. Much of the push for mental health awareness has been recent and occurred well after his formative years. He also wasn’t even diagnosed with bipolar disorder until he was 39, so navigating this diagnosis is still relatively new for him.
Regardless, he still needs to take onus for his mental health. I say that as someone with multiple mental health disorders. They’re just like any other illness; you can recognize you have it and do what you need to do to treat it. Or, you can ignore it and it can have a negative effect on you and those around you.
Contrary to popular rhetoric, I don’t believe this is Kardashian’s fault. She can’t make his disorder go away or make him get help anymore than a spouse of someone with diabetes can control their partner’s blood sugar levels or make them take their insulin.
In fact, no one can make Kanye do something he apparently doesn’t want to do. The only thing people can do is to stop feeding into the fervor surrounding his behavior.
The next time he has an episode, Twitter should be dead silent.
If you really want to help those with mental illnesses, push for educating children about them, so these kids don’t grow up with misguided notions on common and not-so-common mental health disorders. Vote for people who will make legislation changes that will keep people with mental illnesses from being legally discriminated against.
But don’t treat Kanye West like a reality TV show. It’s not helping. He said as much in a 2019 interview with David Letterman.
“It’s a health issue that has a strong stigma on it and people are allowed to say anything about it and discriminate in any way,” he said. “This is like a sprained brain, like having a sprained ankle. And if someone has a sprained ankle, you’re not going to push on him more.
“With us, once our brain gets to a point of spraining, people do everything to make it worse. They do everything possible. They got us to that point and they do everything to make it worse.”
After The Tears & Harriet Tubman Rant, Kanye West Didn't Make The South Carolina Ballot
To anyone still making this a trending topic, I’ll say this emphatically:
Stop making it worse.
I have bipolar disorder and comorbid many other illnesses. I disagree with this article cuz yet again it’s the same narrative: poor Kanye he’s I’ll. This is b.s. ppl let him do anything, then Sympathise !!! And excuse !! It. He deliberately talking sh1t to distract from real important election issues – eg. Police brutality and corona recession. He’s doing this to help his fuhrer trump. This coddling and calling for him is wrong. He is a billionaire selfish narcissist same as Trump. Eg. He and gap three Telfar Clemens under the bus, stole his samples so a white supremacist (Kanye) can center His toxic ideology. Clemens wud have centred social justice. Stop caping for his guy smh. In real world ppl get fired and become homeless and sectioned and beaten and jailed. He Chooses to not use the very best healthcare money can buy – while Distracting from convos about ttrump ending Obamacare right now smh. Stop coddling and caping for a grown man. U r Enabling him. Ur are helping him be toxic. And it effects billions (the u.s. election affects entire planet).
No one is enabling him here. This editorial states very clearly that he is responsible for getting himself better. If you have a problem with factually linking his illness to his behavior, that in itself is an issue. Recognizing the cause is not giving him a pass. It simply identifies the problem, and it’s on him to take advantage of the vast resources available to him to get better.
This article is what’s wrong, justifying his actions by saying “it’s his illness” is not only as grossly shortsighted as his comments in question but a slap in the face to anyone that actually struggles with these issues. Please delete this article.
No one is justifying his actions whatsoever. If you read the article, Kanye is being held accountable for getting himself to be well. What you’re doing is refusing to make a correlation between his illness and his behavior, because you seem to think that doing so gives him a pass. It doesn’t. It simply identifies the problem. And he has to be the one to get better. FYI, I’m someone who “actually deals with these issues” and takes onus to cope and get better, so I know very well what I’m talking about.
Yo, this site is paid to trash ye! Keep the identity politics off this site its for rap and ye is a rapper?
He’s asking to get trashed by acting like a fool. His mission in all this is to get the would-be dictator Trump re-elected. That’s obvious. He’s mentally ill.
I was with the author until paragraph 17. Not only is it completely unrealistic to expect Twitter to be dead silent when Kanye makes ludicrous statements, it’s also patently unhelpful. If you’ve struggled with mental illness, you know that people slinking away from you can be just as stigmatizing and triggering as people mocking you (and I would assume it might be very much so for someone whose symptoms include a constant need for attention and attention seeking behaviors). No, it would be nice and not necessarily helpful (but also not necessarily NOT helpful) if people responded with some compassion and accountability. That’s a black man/a father of four/someone’s son/a child of God, at the end of the day who is floundering and suffering. And he should be seen as such, but also held to account for his neglect of his mental health. No, he shouldn’t be mocked, but neither should he be ignored. The rest of the editorial is on point.
Kanye will be president someday, that’s a fact (probably)
America has almost been completely destroyed by the sleazy game show celebrity that our worst enemy Putin elected. Why would you want somebody almost as bad as Trump to finish us off for good? This is not a game. You work for Russia…right?
….. unless it’s not.
Kanye refuses to learn basic facts about his health or the history of his country when he has all the money in the world and a million people who would kindly teach him whatever he wants to learn and knows that his power magnifies his falsehoods. I don’t care what illness he has, that makes him an awful person.
“there is only one person who can help Kanye West right now — Kanye West”
Exactly! Take your retard meds and shut the faqq up naqqa!
Sorry but Kanye is not just some crazy person standing on street corner yelling at his imaginary friends. He is high profile multimillionaire who is screwing with the most important election since Lincoln ran against Breckenridge. Don’t expect a lot of sympathy for this bi polar ego maniac.
This click-bait is all for the show! We know that Kris scrips the Kardashian-Jenner’s lives for the Attention Addiction. It’s just sickening to the level that she’s taken this drama – making Kanye go through this stupidity of suggesting to run for president, wearing a bullet-proof vest (but not a helmet, duh) talking about abortion, crying on demand, screwing up his own black history and then implying his relationship with Kim is “strained” and that he’d be OK with divorce. No, ControlFreakMama and the girls are just tired of him and want him out. This family and their wanna-be cousins, the Markles, are as crazy as they come. Certainly not examples to aspire to. Wish all of them would shut up and never be seen again.
You obviously didn’t read the article as the point is missed.
Maybe he is NOT mentally ill, maybe Kanye is carrying around a lot of baggage. What he said at the rally in SC, his emotional breakdown, maybe he just needed to get it out of his system. I would imagine that there are not a lot of people that he can be himself around. Van Gogh, if alive today, would have also be labeled crazy. Stop judging him and listen to what he is saying. Why should he have to BE like everyone else? He is comfortable in his own skin, let us not chastise him for that. Just let Kanye be Kanye. Enough said.
I know somebody like van gogh and he’s crazy fo real
He live in my city TAOURIRT. East Morocco, MOROCCO
It’s sad it really is. Kanye hasnt made decent music in a minute and now his marriage is on ths rocks. As far as medications, just give him medical marijuana. He has said he doesnt like his meds because they take away from his creativity. Ok just get that medical and he would probably be good.