ACCURACY AND KINDNESS by Liz Manning

 

Saturday was #WorldMentalHealthDay. It’s a cause close to my heart which I’ve been thinking and writing about a lot this year. I’ve responded angrily on Twitter to apparent platitudes from politicians, calling for properly funded and easily accessible mental health service*. And I’ve blogged practical tips for how to support those of us who experience mental illness on a personal level.**

One of those tips, originating from conversations with my son, was this:

DO consider the everyday language you use and be accurate. DON’T diminish mental illnesses by using diagnoses casually. For example, you’re not ‘a bit OCD’: you just like things to be neat and tidy. It’s very different to the daily-life-disabling anxiety of obsessive compulsive disorder. And you demean the experience of any of us who have a specific condition by referring to it this way.

Mental illness diagnoses, like OCD, can be used quite thoughtlessly in general conversation. And in some ways, that may illustrate the flexibility of language. But for someone who has a diagnosis (which has often taken painful months or years to arrive at), to hear someone else use the word ‘bipolar’ as a mere description of variable moods, it diminishes their experience and illness. And it hurts.

So accuracy in language is important and, perhaps even more so, kindness in language is imperative.

Language evolves over the years, that’s a given. Did you know, for example, that ‘nice’ used to mean ‘silly’ or ‘ignorant’? Or that ‘meticulous’ meant ‘fearful or timid’? I didn’t until recently.

But however much words change their meaning, as Christian writers, I think we need to apply St Paul’s words to how we write. Will our end result be ‘true…honourable…just…pure…lovely…commendable…any excellence…worthy of praise’? Will it reveal ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’? What are our intentions behind using these words? What effect will these have on our readers and hearers?

These qualities may be revealed in the specific words used or rejected. They may be in how our characters behave (I was struck by Wendy Jones’s DI Shona McKenzie’s insistence on no bad language among her team). They may be in the identification of a common experience in a poem. Or how a plot works out. Or in using our writing to fight against injustice. Or how we respond to trolls on social media.

God has given us such a gift in words and the desire to create with them. So in our writing, let’s imitate Him. Let’s exercise truth and accuracy. And let’s always try to #BeKind.

(If you'd like to read the blog posts, these are the links: *World Mental Health Day: How to Help Part 1 and **World Mental Health Day: How to Help Part 2 )

Liz Manning fits writing around being an Occupational Therapist, BB captain, wife, and mum to two adult sons. Or perhaps it's the other way round. She blogs regularly at https://thestufflifeismadeofblog.wordpress.com/