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I know some folks don’t want to hear this, but it needs to be said. People in the QAnon conspiracy movement are, by and large, mentally ill. I say this not to mock or ridicule them. I say it because it’s almost incontestably true. And our unwillingness to say so is a danger to this society and its future.
And yet, some insist we should never call anyone mentally or emotionally unwell, especially if we are not — as I am not — a mental health professional. To do so, they argue, stigmatizes mental illness and contributes to fear and mistreatment of those suffering from various disorders. But both of these lines of reasoning seem terribly misguided to me.
As for diagnosing people without the necessary credentials, note, I am not suggesting I know which disorders afflict persons in the QAnon movement. I wouldn’t diagnose someone on the street holding their stomach tightly while vomiting blood, either. That said, were I to come across such a person, it wouldn’t require having gone to medical school to know they needed to see a doctor, and quickly.
So far as stigma is concerned, dancing around the issue of mental illness only further mystifies it, making it seem distant, rare, and dangerously unmentionable. This silence is what then maintains stigma (and…
