You know how sometimes you read something and it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up?
Narratives about identity and experiences are certainly powerful, necessary, therapeutic, and transformative. Yet I’m struck by their limitations. Knowing about someone’s lived experience of mental illness is important but it is a starting place, not the final outcome of advocacy and health promotion efforts. Discrimination still persists within mental health organisations and services who I’m sure have heard all the stories. Key to making stories matter is translating the stories into practices, actions and change at all levels from the individual, community and systems level. The inadequacy or unsustainability of interventions will not shift from stories alone. We must make stories matter. (emphasis shifted)
— Selfies, narcissism and stigma, Natalie Hendry, 21 Oct 2014.