The Institutionalized Cruelty of Biased Language: From Grand Illusion to Delusion of Normalcy

• Published in: Journal of ethics in mental health 2017-01, Vol.10, p.1
• Main Author: Williams, Izaak L
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bias; Caregiving; Counseling; Cruelty; Insecure; Institutionalization; Language; Mental health; Mental health professionals; Scars; Stereotypes; Walking
• ISSN: 1916-2405

Mental health professionals can find themselves in a precarious balancing act. On one hand they are attempting to demonstrate unconditional positive regard for clients while on the other, they are walking clients through the process of conforming to the expectations of treatment. Clinicians encountering reactance or ‘sustain talk’ and ‘discord’ may then vent their frustrations in staff meetings and within the context of treatment. In this paper, counselors are urged to forgo biased stereotypical negative language (indeed, even their thoughts) in ways that frame clients as a ‘problem’ and ‘difficult’ in addition to other labeling descriptors. Use of such language is a form of harm, analyzed in terms of Mill’s (1869) ‘harm principle’ according to which one ought to refrain from actions, including use of language, which are damaging to another person’s rights. Ordinarily the effects of language do not rise to the level of physical harm that Mill was concerned to limit, but seen through the lens of Hallie’s (1981) ‘institutionalized cruelty’, labeling is a sort of language that undermines the dignity of clients, obviates the avowed commitments of mental health counseling professionals, and scars the reputation of ‘helping’ and ‘caring’ in the profession as a whole. The idea of normalcy against which these judgments are often made is an illusion, and in any case irrelevant to the knowledge necessary to treat the person on which the harmful label has been fixed.