Being compared to Terrorists

Just when I thought I'd seen it all, I see a posting about the NYU Child Study Center's new awareness campaign which uses ads that look like ransom notes to inform the public about certain disorders.

A new campaign is being launched by the NYU Child Studies Center to raise awareness of psychiatric disorders in children, including bulimia, ADHD, depression, OCD and yes...autism and Asperger syndrome. http://www.aboutourkids.org/about_us/public_awareness

How it works:

Public service advertisements are being posted bulletin spaces and kiosks around New York in an effort to get the attention of parents so that they can intervene if their child is being "held histage" by a psychiatric disorder.

"The idea behind the "Ransom Notes" is that, all too often, untreated psychiatric disorders are holding our children hostage. These disorders rob children of the ability to learn, make and keep friends and enjoy life." says the website about the reasoning behind the campaign. The ads look as they sound: like pieces of paper with a quick three sentence or less message either scrawled by hand or via pasted lettering, signed by the disorder in question.

The autism one is a typed one that reads:

"We have your son. We will make sure he will not be able to care for himself or interact socially for as long as he lives.

This is only the beginning.

Autism"

The Asperger Syndrome is a hand-scrawled one that reads:

"We have your son. We are destroying his ability for social interaction and driving him into a life of complete isolation.

It's up to you now.

Asperger Syndrome"

I don't know about anyone else, but I found myself offended by these. When I used to volunteer with the Canadian Mental Health Association, part of our work was to go to schools and deliver presentations about how *not* to stigmatize mental health. It's a lot of hard work when messages like these are being seen by children and adults every day. (Bad enough that this organization is manned mainly by doctors)

Fortunately, these ransom notes are not here in Canada, but they are on the internet for anyone to see.

To me, this "comparison" to terrorists is insulting me because it is yet another awareness campaign that uses stigma at the expense of those of us who have to live with the huge mountain of stigma already looming over us.

Who is this helping?

Parents? I doubt it since parents already have enough stress without negative stigma to feed it or add to it. How does it make them feel? Guilty, depressed, angry...definitely not happy.

The people they are trying to raise awareness about? Nothing lowers self esteem quite like being compared to cancer, bird flu, soul- sucking vampires, kidnappers and terrorists. How does that make them feel? Guilty, angry, insulted, worthless...also not happy. Like being different in this way isn't hard enough! Like we need *another* nasty reminder about how the world sees us.

Here's an angle that might not have been considered by the creators of this campaign:
Victims of real kidnapping and their loved ones...how would this affect them? What would a loved one of a kidnapping victim experience if he or she kept seeing these little ransom notes everywhere. It probably doesn't seem like much, but they could experience flashbacks or revisit some painful memories. Maybe I'm going over the top, but I know I wouldn't be too happy about seeing these things if this had happened to me. It would almost be like a cheap parody or something.

At best, I find this campaign tasteless. At worst, I find it demeaning.

This inspires a "fun" project for myself: To make a list of all of the things said about autism in the media and by others which are like this one.

It could take a few days and would take up a lot of space, but it would be interesting to have all of these things in one place to see, wouldn't it?

Something to do when I have time....