I've been told by those 'in the know' that people with mental illness now prefer to be called 'mad' It varies from person to person, depending on the nature of their illness. I'm bipolar myself, and I don't prefer to be called 'mad'; I'm a person with an illness - it's just not one that has physical symptoms. 'Mad', to me, suggests a derangement of the senses in which one is no longer able to distinguish between what is reality and what is the product of a diseased mind; I just get very, very depressed with occasional manic spells in which I dont sleep for three days, am excessively bouncy and creative and occasionally do daft things like microwave lightbulbs for fun - but I never lose track of what is real and what is fantasy. Microwaving lightbulbs may seem like an insane thing to do - but even whilst doing it I'm well aware how daft it is, and I've never done anything truly dangerous whilst manic. I'm at more risk to myself when depressed. I would get very upset if someone were to call me mad; I might occasionally joke about being mad as a hatter with someone else who shared my problem, but if a 'normal' person were to appropriate the term and refer to me as mad I would find that offensive. I think you will find the 'homosexuals and gay' analogy to be less apt than perhaps the 'blacks and nigger' one. We can use the term for ourselves, but anyone else using it would be doing so inappropriately and would risk offending the person concerned. Why make the distinction between physical illness and mental illness anyway? Mental illness is still biological in nature, even if you can't see physical symptoms or measure it with monitoring equipment in the back of an ambulance; it's an imbalance in brain chemistry that responds to medication. Just call us what we are: sick people. Ill people. Unwell people. Patients.