I don't know who this judge is, but I reckon you guys in the US should write to him and complain. That's outrageous! Bipolar is sometimes used as a term of abuse over here, as well as the older "manic depressive." So are "schizo" and "schizophrenic." My son has asperger's syndrome, and takes things very literally, so when kids at school say, "are you manic depressive or what?" he thinks that he might have the condition. (He doesn't.) I had to explain to him that people use these as terms of abuse, and he was shocked silly. He simply couldn't understand why anyone would use a medical term as an insult.

Sometimes I think that people imagine there's a level of choice in being mentally ill. My Dad says things like "there's a certain self indulgence in sucumbing to melencholy." (I'm not melencholy, I'm suffering from schizoaffective disorder!) And I'm aware that some people think Borderline Personality Disorder is just teenagers being "goth". I do get the "pull yourself together" attitude from my Dad, who in many ways is wonderful. He simply can't understand how his little princess (he was a very devoted Dad when I was a child) could possibly have turned out this way. He says things like, "it would be much easier if you could drive", or "you need to have ambitions, think of your career." (I struggle to do seven hours of voluntary work a week.) I wish he understood that I'm not lazy, or self indulgent, I'm sick. At least my brother understands, and so does my stepmum. It helps that some of my family at least are coming to terms with my differences.