密歇根新闻广播 心理健康的辱名带走了他的生命

A personal tragedy can open your eyes to things that had previously¹ been out of sight and out of mind.

For Abby Dart², it was her husband's suicide in 2004. That loss opened her eyes to the stigma³ we've built up around mental health problems. She believes that stigma killed her husband Steve.

As Dart revealed in her recent Detroit News column, she believes we can and must tear down mental health stigma.

Dart said unifying⁴ our public health system is a way to start. She said we need a public health system that looks equally at both physical health and mental health.

"I think what happened was many, many years ago – I call it sort of the ‘dark ages' – people were very frightened of anything dealing⁵ with the brain and mental health and mental illness," she said.

That led society to establish separate codes – one for physical health and one for mental health, she said.

For instance, Dart said if a person in a suicidal state is voluntarily hospitalized, but not committed, that person can walk out.

"You can leave," she said. "You would never do that for somebody that was hospitalized with a heart attack."

Dart said these different standards and the associated stigma of mental illness keeps too many people from receiving the help they need.

In fact, she said she believes it wasn't the mental disease that killed her husband. It was the stigma.

"He was a successful, Harvard-educated attorney and, even with all that education, he was reluctant to seek treatment early," she said. "He thought maybe a colleague or his employer might find out about it."

That same thing happens to too many people today, she said.

"People think they can handle it," she said, "when you wouldn't think you could handle heart disease or high blood pressure."

That, she said, is the mindset that needs to change.

For the full interview, including how Dart thinks schools can help knock down mental health stigma, listen above.

1 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

2 dart   

v.猛冲，投掷；n.飞镖，猛冲

参考例句：

• The child made a sudden dart across the road.那小孩突然冲过马路。
• Markov died after being struck by a poison dart.马尔科夫身中毒镖而亡。

3 stigma   

n.耻辱，污名；(花的)柱头

参考例句：

• Being an unmarried mother used to carry a social stigma.做未婚母亲在社会上曾是不光彩的事。
• The stigma of losing weighed heavily on the team.失败的耻辱让整个队伍压力沉重。

4 unifying   

使联合( unify的现在分词 )； 使相同； 使一致； 统一

参考例句：

• In addition, there were certain religious bonds of a unifying kind. 此外，他们还有某种具有一种统一性质的宗教上的结合。
• There is a unifying theme, and that is the theme of information flow within biological systems. 我们可以用一个总的命题，把生物学系统内的信息流来作为这一研究主题。

5 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。