Think before you speak

If every conversation is an excursion, then some words are adjustable airplane seats, comfortable and conducive to idle chatter. But others can be that unexpected gust of air, breaking the flying formation and leaving a lone bird riding a wind current alone.

These words require a little more caution. For the sake of brevity and the remote possibility of a coherent analysis, I will limit myself to a specific collection of them: depressive disorder, schizophrenia, autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder.

Each of these distinct labels represents an enormous range of symptoms and experiences, varying wildly in their place and relative significance in individuals’ lives. In fact, experts at the Psychiatric Clinics of North America say the textbook descriptions aren’t representative of all the conditions that exist on a spectrum.

They all represent intensely internal human experiences that we on the outside can’t comprehend or truly sympathize with — it’s a fatal mistake to think we can. So a respectful distance from these words is warranted.

But behind those disorders are people, and more than anything else in the world we should be wary of building distance between people. So where do we go from here?

Interestingly enough, some of these terms, like OCD, depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and ADD, do come up regularly in the stream of casual human interaction, although they usually misrepresent somewhat grossly the real spectrum of experiences scientifically correlated with each one.

Suddenly OCD is responsible for every anxious habit, and depression only means someone is having a bad week.

How do these terms occasion such flippant common use, while the others, like rocks in the stream, disturb the current, endanger a raft and bloody a nose every time one is dislodged from its hiding place? What’s different?

It seems somewhere in these terms people find something they identify with, some human characteristic they realize they share. Then they take up this term and apply it.

And while this may disrespect the reality of the disorder, there might be something to be admired in that attempted empathy that finds the gap between one with a disorder and one without to be only a matter of degree. And not an unbridgeable stigmatic barrier.

But why, then, are some of these terms left out?

This is the real injustice. If we’re willing to bend reality to overapply some of these terms, why can’t we find common characteristics between us and people with disorders like autism and schizophrenia?

I can’t speak for everyone, but I consistently find that symptomatic gap to be much smaller than we imagine. I don’t go a day without finding a little bit of autism in me.

And as for schizophrenia and similar disorders? Let’s be real. We’re college kids in a crowded, high-stress, academic environment. Most of us aren’t more than one disembodied voice and a Xanax away from psychosis.