"mentally deranged; demented; insane. adj"

"an unpredictable, nonconforming person; oddball: noun"

These are just a few of the definitions that you get when you type the word crazy into the search box on Dictionary.com.

This five letter word has many meanings, some are negative and some are positive. The question is: should this be a word that's used when talking about mental illnesses? Is it the best way to describe people with mental illnesses?

Despite how far society has come over the years, mental illness is still very much a sensitive topic. Something that you should keep private. Something that you can get over yourself because going to therapy is too expensive and "unnecessary". Some people don't even know that they have an illness and others simply don't want to know.

They don't want to be considered crazy.

I came across this one article from this week.com, which discusses what TV gets wrong about mental illness. After reading through the article, I believe that what is shown on TV has a huge influence on most people's view of mental illness-whether they have it themselves or not.

One example of this would be when the author (Angelica Jade Bastien) talked about how some characters who have a disorder like schizophrenia are introduced through violence. This actually made me think of one episode of Law and Order SVU where this man with schizophrenia refuses to take his medicine and then becomes a suspect in a stabbing death.

Now, to someone who doesn't know a lot about the disease or hasn't been affected by it personally, this could lead to the conclusion that people with schizophrenia are dangerous. That they need to be kept on a lot of medication and locked up in some psych ward.

I do realize that TV isn't supposed to be a public service platform 24/7, but with millions of viewers everyday-it almost is. Whether they mean to or not, people develop their opinions from what they watch on TV.

Unfortunately, more often than not people who have a mental illness have been called crazy at least once at some point of their lives. I know one person in particular who was called crazy by a close relative and this relative knew that she had clinical depression.

When you hear the word in this context, it's almost like a punch in the face. It makes you feel like you've been sent back in time fifty years. I remember hearing someone say that when using the word crazy when referring to mental illness, you're making it seem like it's okay to trivialize such a serious thing-whether it's intentional or not. It's reason why you don't use the word "retarded" as a synonmn for "ridiculous".