Shackled Lives

Another look at the stigma of mental health leading up to World Mental Health Day on 10 October and the reality that we are still locking the mentally ill away – then behind closed doors; now with labels and the stigma that prevails. Time for change

Once lives locked behind bars
Constrained by irons and jacket
Restricted by fear and doctrine
Stereotyped as mad
Alienated by society

Yet now as wards lies desolate
Lives are still shackled
And men grapple in clichéd fear
Petrified by the diversity of mind
Assigning labels in the place of bars

Vincent van Gogh [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons