Why Calling Laura From 'Love Island' A "Psycho" Is Actually Incredibly Harmful

Love Island's Laura Anderson is back under cruel public scrutiny. On Tuesday, her partner Jack Fowler was asked on a date by new girl Alexandra Cane; despite Jack’s assurances that he wasn’t interested, Laura began to panic. Twitter promptly labelled her a "psycho", "crazy", and "neurotic". But using those labels for any woman, including Laura from Love Island, is deeply problematic — and here's why.

Firstly, there's a long, misogynistic history behind the notion of the "crazy woman". As Bustle has previously reported, too often, women's emotional reactions are minimised or dismissed by the suggestion that they're just being "crazy." It's a notion that women have been forced, over centuries, to internalise, to the extent that doubting the validity of your feelings and perceptions becomes normal.

Look just a little deeper into the past, and you'll discover that a wide span of women whose behaviour was considered at all disagreeable were pathologised under the catchall diagnosis "hysteria". Anxious? Hysteria! Unhappy? Hysteria! In possession of an opinion that doesn't align with the patriarchy? Hysteria! So that cavalier response to Laura's Love Island reactions carries a bit more baggage than you might realise.

And then, there's the issue of using "crazy" or "psycho" as an insult in the first place. As words flippantly deployed as shorthand for mental illness, they reflect — and perpetuate — the stigma around living with a mental health condition. And that stigma is no small matter. In 2017, the BBC reported NHS Digital statistics that "nearly nine in 10 people who have had mental health problems report they have suffered stigma and discrimination." Casually tossing around words like "crazy" and "psycho" as insults reinforces that stigma and inhibits recovery, and also stops people being comfortable speaking out about their own condition.

It takes so little effort to quietly reflect on your language before you use it — whether that's at work, on Twitter, or on your living room sofa sounding off on the latest Love Island development. But the difference that reflection can have is monumental, so while we exist in a society that continues to belittle women's perceptions and stigmatise mental illness, a plea: just stop calling women "crazy".