S.A. veteran says service dog was kicked out of store, harassed

[LeftishBrit]

178. Yes it's bigotry...

because it's implying that people who need some service or accommodation due to a mental illness are in general likely to be fakers or making unjustified demands for help.

In the UK, our right-wing government and even more right-wing media have been causing great distress and suffering to people with mental illnesses and other invisible (and sometimes visible) disabilities by pushing the view that lots of people are on disability benefits unjustifiably, and are basically just a lot of workshy scroungers. This has caused an increase in hate-crime toward disabled people; increased poverty in an already mostly-poor group; a great deal of stress and humiliation to people who do not need it; and has even in some cases contributed to premature deaths. Part of this has involved implying that doctors cannot be relied on to assess whether people are unable to work or not, and putting the decisions into the hands of a particularly nasty and irresponsible group called ATOS:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19437785

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/paralympics/paralympic-sponsor-engulfed-by-disability-tests-row-8084799.html

It may be that your opinion is restricted to service dogs in particular; and that you do not suspect mentally ill people of being undeserving of other forms of assistance; but the argument that 'psychiatrists just give people what they want' is easily used to deny mentally ill people the right to any help at all. Moreover, it simply isn't true. Psychiatrists may arguably be sometimes over-ready to simply prescribe pills instead of looking at the broader picture; but that does not mean that they just give people any drug that they want.