Stigma of mental health disorders. Stigma of therapy. Stigma of addiction. Stigma of a divorced home. Stigma of anything and everything...
When it comes to shidduchim, we stigmatize and stereotype a lot. We look for the "perfect" individual, judging someone based on information we find out about him/her before we really get the chance to meet him/her and judge his/her character for ourselves in relation to who s/he is.
There are certain buzzwords that scare us, and if you're dealing with a mental health issue or such of your own, it's probably actually a good idea to stay away from using those words yourself. The list isn't limited to, but includes words like, "mood disorder," "psychotic breakdown," "manic," "addict," "broken home," etc. Obviously, it's important to be honest about what you're dealing with, but because the layperson generally is ignorant of what these things mean, it's a better idea to explain it in a way they will chap what you're dealing with rather than throwing scary words at them.
Dr. David Lieberman, a renowned expert on interpersonal relationships and human behavior espouses the idea that if you know what an issue is and it's managed, it is perhaps a red flag, but it is not, in no uncertain terms, a deal breaker (unless for you it is for whatever particular reason...for even something simple like having red hair, for example, can be considered a deal breaker I guess).
He talks about how the only red flags he considers inflexible are unmanaged anger issues, an obsession with one's image, arrogance, being rude/disrespectful, and a (genuine) addictive personality. For every person who is diagnosed, in therapy, managing their condition with medication, ie. they're aware of the problem and working on it, there are countless others who are not diagnosed but have the same or similar problems and should be, as well as be in therapy and/or on medication. The person who is dealing with his/her issue is the responsible one, the one who knows what challenge is and how to deal with it.
Obviously, if the person isn't managing his/her issue well, then that is a different story. If someone tells you s/he'll quit drinking, smoking, other pathological/inappropriate behaviors after you're married, that is a redder than red flag. It 9.9 times out of 10 will not happen. However, if the person has already gotten to a place where they are working on their issue, they're working a program, they're responsible about what is going on, it's less scary than the person who hasn't owned up to the issue at all. Also, anything can happen at any time, and somewhere down the lines the "perfect" healthy person can develop a mental illness or whatever too.
Dr. Lieberman also adds that if you're concerned about genetics, that your children will have what this person has, the bigger factor in psychological health is environment, not so much heredity. Relatedly, he posits that a person's parents' shalom bayis matters, but less so than the person himself/herself's middos and how s/he treats people in his/her family.
I think Dr. Lieberman takes a very liberal stance on a lot of this, because it often isn't as simple as he makes it seem. At the end of the day, I always go back to how we need to think about if this person is the right person for me. Can I deal with this thing? Can I handle this baggage?
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