Definitions to know
Mental illness
Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these). -American Psychiatric Association
Examples of mental illnesses: Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder.
Deinstitutionalization
A movement that began with the intent of moving individuals from large psychiatric hospitals to smaller, local mental health clinics. This movement was partially started after the invention of Thorazine, also known as Chlorpromazine, the first anti-psychotic drug.
Substance Use Disorder
A diagnosable mental illness that is characterized in-part by dependency on a substance. It is a medical condition.
Social Power
Access to resources that enhance one’s chances of getting what one needs in order to lead a comfortable, productive and safe life.
Prejudice
A judgment or belief that is formed on insufficient grounds before facts are known or in disregard of facts that contradict it. Prejudices are learned and can be unlearned.
Agent or Privileged identities
Social groups that are positively valued considered superior, independent, or “normal” and have access to resources and power.
Socialization
The process by which a human beginning at infancy acquires the habits, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training (by family, friends, culture and systems/institutions).
Collusion
Ways that members of agent and target groups think and act, often unconsciously, that support oppressive systems and maintains the status quo.
Classism
The institutional, cultural, and individual set of beliefs and discrimination that assigns differential value to people according to their socio-economic class; and an economic system which creates excessive inequality and causes basic human needs to go unmet.
Oppression
When an agent group, whether knowingly or unknowingly, abuses a target group. This pervasive system is rooted historically and maintained through individual and institutional/systematic discrimination, personal bias, bigotry, and social prejudice, resulting in a condition of privilege for the agent group at the expense of the target group.
Discrimination
The unequal allocation of goods, resources, and services, and the limitation of access to full participation in society based on individual membership in a particular social group; reinforced by law, policy, and cultural norms that allow for differential treatment on the basis of identity.
Target or Oppressed Identities
Social groups that are negatively valued, considered to be inferior, abnormal, or dependent and given limited access to resources and social power.