Mental Illness

Portland Examiner columnist Jenny Westberg claims the title belongs to bias against the mentally ill:

After years of inequality and hatred, many minority groups have won some respect. You would never, for instance, talk about your African American friends using a certain word starting with “N.”

But even in our enlightened age, many people refer to those with psychiatric disabilities as “crazies,” “nutcases,” “loony tunes,” “whack jobs,” “head cases,” “sickos,” “retards,” “flakes,” “schizos,” “weirdos” – and the list goes on.

I was not aware that the term “flake” referred to mental illness.