Mental Illness. When you hear that, what do you think of? Do you become scared of the person confiding in you once you heard those two words? Do you suddenly think they’re strange and not normal anymore? Why does your perception of a person change when you discover their mental illness? This tends to happen because of the stigma society has placed around mental illnesses.
Because of this stigma, people become ashamed and scared to find help for their illness. Not finding help leads to it worsening and sometimes even driving people to suicidal thoughts.
I can speak from personal experience that mental illnesses can be just as debilitating as physical injury or illnesses. For as long as I can remember, I’ve suffered from symptoms of anxiety. I can look back on my habits from childhood and pinpoint the symptoms that have now caused me to be diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). I was officially diagnosed in October 2017 and have been on different medications for it since then.
This disorder consumes every part of my life. It interferes with my sleep, relationship, friendships, and even physically affects me. It causes anxiety attacks, and at its worst, panic attacks. When I’m overwhelmed with stress, my anxiety takes over and wreaks havoc: I overthink more than usual, I overreact and am more irritable, I’m exhausted all the time from the constant anxiety, I sometimes have insomnia and if I don’t I wake up several times throughout the night, and I even get physically sick with nausea. As you can see, anxiety is not simply getting nervous, as some are referring to when they claim they have anxiety. (Don’t get me wrong, anyone can be anxious at any time depending on the situation, but claiming a mental condition for invalid reasons just minimizes the seriousness of anxiety to others even more.)
Although I am always suffering from this illness, I’ve only opened up about it to my boyfriend, my two best friends, and my family. I’m scared to tell people about it because I don’t want them to judge me and think I’m less normal than everyone else.
That is a problem. What’s an even bigger problem is that, according to Mental Health America, 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. suffer from a mental health condition, and 56% of those adults do not receive treatment. I believe that this is the result of the stigma instilling shame in those suffering from a mental illness. Not receiving treatment is detrimental to not only a person’s mental health but to their overall health as well.
Our society needs to end the stigma surrounding mental health so that those in need can get the treatment they deserve. We need to stop shaming people into secrecy about their illness and instead give encouragement and help. Mental illnesses are nothing to be ashamed about and they are more common than most think, which is why our society needs to learn how to support each other in these hard times with illness instead of putting each other down for suffering from a condition we can’t control.
Did I not convince you? Here are my sources for further information:
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