“A New Kind of Coming Out.” That was the cover story of the June 2, 2016, Washington Post Kindle Fire app. The story had nothing to do with sex or sexual orientation and/or gender identity. It was about “the stigma of mental illness,” and about what the Post called “sufferers” (more about that word, anon) are doing to combat the stigma.

Long story short: they’re telling their stories, just as I did nearly two decades ago while writing about suicide on college campuses for Boundless. After putting suicide in its medical and cultural context, I switched gears and wrote: “I have manic-depressive illness. I’ve been up close and personal with the kind of depression that feels like someone sucked all of the oxygen out of the room. I know all about the infelicitous brain chemistry than can make it almost impossible to get out of bed. I also know about the flip side: the exhilaration that makes you scarily productive and creative. I know what it’s like to not want to sleep because you want to record your ‘genius’ for posterity. I’m here because of medicine.”

So, to the people telling their stories and, thus, making it easier for their fellow “sufferers” (give me a few more minutes) to get the help they need, I can only say “Bravo!”

But “coming out?” It’s not that I mind being compared to a LGBT person. I really don’t care. But I do care about the way that the experiences of millions of Americans who know the often-devastating impact of infelicitous brain chemistry are being edited and shaped to conform with other people’s narratives.

Post writer Colby Itkowitz uses the phrase “coming out” twice, as if emphasizing a kind of equivalency between publicly acknowledging that you suffer (patience, patience) from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and/or major depression, and publicly saying that you are gay or lesbian.

In case you missed the point, she also tells readers, “Likened by some to the gay rights movement, with its beginnings in personal revelation, the groundswell to lift the stigma connected with mental illness has had a multiplying effect accelerated by social media.” Who is this “some?” I suspect that it includes the Post.

From the start, the article blurs (confuses?) two experiences—public acknowledgment of being LGBT and public acknowledgment of being bipolar, schizophrenic, etc.—that are analogous, i.e., they share some characteristics in common. In this case, the shared characteristics are a revelation of personal information that many people prefer remain hidden for fear of disapproval or, worse, discrimination.*

What the Post seems to overlook (be ignorant of?) is that two things that are analogous in some way usually remain more unalike than alike, often far more so. For instance, some human institutions function in a way that is analogous to a bee colony: They are strongly hierarchical with a single, unchallenged individual at the top of the hierarchy; there is a great deal of specialization; and when at their optimum, they function as a single organism.

But only an idiot would walk into the headquarters of one of these organizations looking for honey. (To be fair to the Post, they are not alone in this kind of error. As this recent BreakPoint commentary points out, many scientists have taken various analogous operations of the human brain and computers as proof that our brains are computers.)

Likewise, while LGBT people speak and are spoken of in terms of “identity,” people with mental illness are (rightly!) said to be suffering (finally!) from the personal characteristic they are speaking publicly about. While I am intrigued with and, truth be told, even take some satisfaction and solace between the possible links between mood disorders and creativity that Kay Redfield Jamison writes about in “Touched by Fire: Manic-depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament,” the fact remains that there’s something that people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and/or major depression who go off their meds are often called: suicide victims.

Add the debilitating nature of major mood disorders and other severe mental illnesses to the equation, and “sufferer” is an apt characterization. Yet, if all you had to go on was the Post article, you could reasonably conclude that the principle, if not only, source of the sufferer’s, well, suffering is the stigma associated with mental illness.

[Note to esteemed editors: Can I swear in Spanish? How about Urdu? Hindi? Okay, you can’t blame a guy for trying.]

This is, to put it very politely, nonsense. The stigma talked about in the article is real. What’s more, people with mental illnesses spend a great deal of their lives blaming themselves for things that, when properly understood, aren’t really their fault or, at least, cannot fairly be the basis upon which their character should be judged.** All of this contributes to feelings of shame and isolation, which only makes the problems worse.

But what’s even more real is that the source of the suffering associated with mental illness is the mental illness itself. When your moods are cycling faster than Greg Lemond, or you are in the grip of obsessive thoughts that have you repeating absurd behaviors over and over and over again because if you don’t Something Very Bad is going to happen, what the neighbors might think isn’t that important.

This is something that the folks at the Post cannot not know. But if they are going to tell the story through the seemingly obligatory “personal revelation/embracing your identity/coming out” narrative, they have to omit or least downplay any mention of suffering intrinsic to the identity being embraced and announced.

It could hardly be otherwise. For reasons that aren’t difficult to understand, virtually every “out” LGBT person would strenuously object to the idea that they are suffering from anything that has to do with his or her sexual orientation/identity.*** The same goes for their supporters, including, I think it’s fair to say, the folks at the Washington Post.

Let me be clear: I understand the origins of the whole “gay pride” thing. It was, in significant part, a reaction to the uncharitable behavior, including straight-up hatred, of which that gay folks were on the receiving end. That the compensating response to that hatred has gone too far doesn’t negate the fact that people were reacting to something real. Thus, the “personal revelation/embracing your identity/coming out” narrative in this instance was predictable and even understandable.†

But it’s not, nor should it be, paradigmatic for the entire human condition. Setting aside the whole issue of LGBT “identity” (really, I mean it!), which is at the heart of the “coming out” narrative, saying that your bipolar disorder or schizophrenia is who you are makes no sense, with or without the Seroquel.

But that’s where the Post’s sloppy attempt at an analogy leads. I’m not surprised or even disturbed that the Post will not say something like “the experience of being LGBT is like the experience of having a mental illness.” But I’m troubled—no, make that appalled—that it would seek to convince readers that the experience of having a mental illness is like the experience of being LGBT. That makes as much sense as Winnie the Pooh visiting Menlo Park and asking Mark Zuckerberg if he has any honey he can spare.

* Let’s put aside any consideration of whether, in this day and age, “coming out” as gay or lesbian involves stigma of any significant sort. It’s not germane to the current discussion.
** To cite an example sure to make some people very uncomfortable, hypersexuality—which is exactly what the word sounds like, including reckless sexual behavior—and profligate spending are behaviors strongly associated with mania.
*** To state what should be obvious but, alas, seems not to be, to understand something is not the same as agreeing with it.
†See previous note.