How many times have we heard this or even done it ourselves? Ugh, that girl is so bipolar. My roommate is schizo, I swear to god. It's like my OCD habit, I just have to alphabetize my books! It's become an acceptable thing to use a mental illness as an adjective to describe the "off" behavior we have from day to day without realizing the deeper implications of what we're doing, or how that offends other people.

It's such an acceptable thing that people literally do not think anything of it. I've heard it from friends, their parents, even teachers and other adults with authority, and they never can understand the blank stare I give them in return. We've all heard the expression "mental illnesses are not adjectives" before, but judging by the amount of people who still use them in that manner, my guess is that few are actually listening.

I know what you're thinking: here comes the PC police. Go ahead, write this off as another person behind a computer screen ranting for the sake of sensitivity. However, this isn't a matter of being overly sensitive or trying to police other people's language. It's a matter of serious illnesses carrying a lot of stigma with them, and others using them to explain away why your mom won't loan you money or the need to line your papers up neat.

Maybe I would be "less sensitive" if the issue at hand wasn't as serious as it was. I don't think I need to explain about having a mental illness in our society, but I will for the sake of rhetoric. Mental illnesses have various affects on people, can develop at any time and cause a whole array of symptoms, but they all result in the same thing; stress. Anxiety, obsession, paranoia, depression and mania are just a few of the side effects of various mental illnesses, none of which are easy to live with. They impair not only the way you think, but the way you feel and process on a day to day basis. They idle at inconvenient and thrive at ruining your life.

I also don't need to explain that there is so much judgement towards people who are mentally ill. Why is this? Lack of education, for starters. If you go up to the average person, they will not be able to correctly define "schizophrenia," falsely correlating it with multiple personality disorder, or DID. Many will not know that bipolar disorder is characterized by manic ups and downs, not just feeling really happy or really sad. And, as always, obsessive compulsive disorder will be defined as "the hand washing" or "neat freak" disorder that everyone claims at some point in their life to have.

Why is this such a big deal? The answer is simple: how can you make light of something you can't even define, let alone understand?

This sounds so childish, but in many ways, it's true. People not affected by mental illness, whether it be depression or schizotypical disorder, have no idea what it's like. Maybe it's easier to take and make jokes about things that you don't experience, or maybe it's the distance and the aforementioned stigma combined that makes you not care as much. Essentially, the whole matter boils down to mental illnesses make simple tasks more difficult, social interactions near about impossible, and oh yeah, everyone assumes you're crazy.

I don't know at what point "mental illness" and "crazily acting a fool" became synonymous, but it couldn't be further from the truth. A good chunk of mentally ill people are extremely high functioning, and can take care of and support themselves, despite this horrible illness. Mental illness has this very false reputation of constant suicide attempts and muttering into the wall about Jesus, and while these things do exist, not every mental illness sufferer experiences that. In fact, mental illness affects every patient in a different way.

So, why is it such a problem to use mental illnesses as adjectives? At the heart of the issue, that's why: you're contributing to the idea that the mental illness is bad. Something to be ashamed of. A flaw, or in some cases, a crazy behavior, that therefore becomes a dirty word that's only worthy of an eye roll and a disgusted tongue. There's enough stigma around mental illness as it is; treating them like adjectives is dehumanizing, it's insulting, it's basically saying "my analogy is more important than your feelings." Because, like I said, mentally ill people can be high functioning. You may be speaking to a person with the mental illness you just tossed around as a modifier and never even know it.

People get uncomfortable when I don't laugh at their "I'm so OCD" lines, and I don't regret my decision to stand by this conviction. Because my mental illness is not a joke to me, and I won't let it be to anyone else either.