Hi there.

I'm a person with generalized anxiety disorder, and chronic major depressive disorder. These illnesses drag me through hell and back at least two times a week with medicine. These mental illnesses keep me angry, numb, anxious, sad and hurting at all times. Physically, they make me tired, unable to concentrate, and feel aching pains. These mental illnesses make me wish I were dead at least once a day.

Those mental illnesses are why I'm writing this.

Recently, a "fun" trend that many anti-trump people have taken part in is "diagnosing" Donald Trump with mental illnesses. Now, it's no surprise that I hate Trump more than I hate anything else. I think he's a bully, a bigot, a homophobe, and a grade-a jackass. In fact, I frequently compare him to a shriveled up orange who couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag with a knife. You may be wondering why I'm "defending" him if I hate him so much, and there's a simple answer to that: I'm not. He is everything I've ever described him as. He is vile, disgusting, and a bad human being. There is one thing, however, he is not: mentally ill.

When you call everyone's favorite dumpster fire a sociopath, you are invalidating the experience of every sociopath out there. When you scream that he has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, you are telling every person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder that they are just like him. You are demonizing people who suffer in the same way I do. You are demonizing humans who have done nothing but have a mental illness. You are demonizing people who have been abused (like myself), people who have been abandoned, people who have committed no crime other than having bad genes.

Now, I'm not saying that stopping this will suddenly end the stigma around mental illness. People said things like "it's your fault you're depressed" when I tell them I had a down day, or "please don't make a scene" when I'm having a panic attack long before America's Greatest Failure came along. In fact, they used to take people like me and lock them up in asylums, where they would be beaten, used as lab rats, and thrown away like trash when they died. There's so much more work we have to do to fix the stigma, the first of which, I believe, is to understand that armchair diagnosing anyone is wrong. That starts with Trump.

If you really want to protest for our rights, don't say Dumpster-Donald is a narcissist. If you really want to end prejudice in America, don't say that Donny the Douche is a sociopath. If you want to better America, support people like me. Support people with mental illnesses. Support people with personality disorders. Support people with Schizophrenia. It can be as simple as saying "I'm so sorry you're going through that". It can be as much as saying "How can I help?" It can be anything, as long as it's supportive and working to end the stigma towards mental illnesses.

Please, stand up against those who would compare people like me to people like Trump.