An open letter to Miley Cyrus

Dear Miley Cyrus,

I am very concerned about your reply to Sinead O'Connor's heartfelt advice to you

I don't care if you want to flaunt your sexuality. You are, after all, an adult. You are no longer Hannah Montana, and I can understand that you wish to make that fact known to your millions of fans all over the world.

What I find really disturbing is your attitude towards mental health issues. You show total disregard to your fans who may be struggling with their own mental illness and coming to terms with a psychiatric diagnosis..

October is Mental Health Awareness Month in the UK, and people all over the country are taking part, raising the issue and thus helping to beat stigma, so your comments are especially poignant. I am sure that you know better than to be disrespectful of people's race, religion, sexuality and physical disabilities. So why pick on a debilitating illness? By the way, some types of mental illnesses are also classed as a disability.

By mocking Sinead's and Amanda Bynes because of their battles with psychiatric illnesses, you are  sending the totally wrong message to your fans. After all, it does affect one in four people in case you didn't know. So let me do some maths for you. On your official Facebook page, you have 29 million fans. That means that over 7 million of your fans are currently suffering from mental illness. Some may have been diagnosed. Others will have read your recent tweets and be afraid to seek help because of the stigma you have highlighted so insensitively..

Let me make this clear to you. Insanity, craziness, madness or whatever you want to call it IS an illness. There may not be any visible signs, but that does not mean that it doesn't exist. It does, And it hurts. A lot. It is easy to recover from a broken leg. A heart transplant is now a common surgical procedure. But how do you cure broken mind? Yes, there are medications that help, as well as other types of therapies. But these are just coping mechanisms; there is no 'cure'. There is recovery, but that means learning to live with your symptoms and manage on a day to day basis. This is a lifelong process, and there will be ups and downs.

Unless you or a loved one experiences this, you will have no idea of what it is to live with mental health issues. I suggest that you educate yourself with what happens to those of us who are unlucky enough to receive a diagnosis of psychiatric illness.  I really hope you or someone you love never has to go through this, Incidentally, suicide is the most common cause of death in men under 35. Think of that the next time you are twerking.

Oh and one final word of advice - please put that tongue away. It is not pretty.

Yours sincerely,

A survivor 

Why is fat shaming still socially acceptable?

Trawling through this morning's online edition of the Daily Mail (aka Daily Fail) I came across two very different stories, both on the subject of weight - specifically women's weight.

The first one's headline is :

'You're fat... the ultimate insult: Making a jibe about appearance is more likely to offend than swearing or insulting race or religion'

The article features a photo of a woman taken from behind. This seems to be a habit with the press, and it always makes me wonder if these people have given their permission for their photographs to be used.

Some of the comments made by the readers demonstrate a level of ignorance and insensitivity that is mind boggling. Just for a second imagine the reaction if the word 'fat' was replaced by the word 'black' or 'gay'. There would be an outcry, that is, if those comments would make it past the Mail's moderator, which I doubt very much.

most fat people deserve everything they get, isnt being a glutton a sin?

- frank bull, manchester, United Kingdom, 9/8/2013 5:10

yep that is why I do it.... "You are Ugly" also works..... and for the chicks "I see you have been shopping at thrift shops again"

- bob, China, China, 9/8/2013 7:04

Its amazing to hear how many fat people have a 'Thyroid problem' these days and weird that it was practically unheard of 30 years ago when, funnily enough there were less fat people. The government needs to invest heavily in 'thyroid problem' research and find a cure soon before we're all struck down with acute laziness.

 - Expat Eddie, Sydney, 9/8/2013 7:19 

Some people just can't accept the truth - if they're fat, they're fat! "Fat" is NOT an offensive word nor an insult. Get over yourselves.

- TonyMartin, Berwick, 9/8/2013 7:28

The second story features Emma, a young woman who is a slimming club's slimmer of the year. These sort of stories feature quite regularly in the press, but the headline that grabbed my attention was this:

It appears to make humiliation acceptable. A bit rich from the Mail, seeing as they are also jumping on the bandwagon calling for the ask.fm website to be removed because they believe that cyber bullying has led to children's suicide.

Emma herself describes her experience: 

"I was going to an Asian wedding and I had to get measured for an outfit which was basically a long dress and trousers. The women were measuring me and they said "that can't be right". They couldn't believe I was that size. I was mortified."

No censoring of those women's cruel remark, or how this impacted Emma psychologically. Which brings me to my own experience. A few years ago, I was roughly Emma's weight before she began her weight loss journey. I was suffering from knee pain, something that flares up now and then because of a fall I had over 20 years ago, which resulted in me having surgery and a piece of cartilege removed. Rather than look at my medical history, this doctor assumed that my joints were straining because of the weight I was carrying...ok, I admit that did not help matters. He then told me that if I didn't lose weight I would be a big fat blob by the time I was 60. That's right, he called me a BIG FAT BLOB!!!

I left the surgery in tears, and as soon as I got home, I tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose. The doctor had also ommitted to check my history of mental health issues and suicide attempts before he made that comment. Even thinking back about it now still hurts and brings back feelings of anger.

It did however, trigger me to lose weight. But was this the right approach? If my husband hadn't made me throw up the pills I took that day I wouldn't be here to tell the tale. I would have ended up as a big fat corpse. 

As an end note, we did complain to the surgery about said doctor. It seems that other people had also complained about him, as he is no longer practising there.