Today, conversations around mental health has an immense amount of prevalence within our communities, whether it be because we have a mental illness or we know of someone who does. I believe we have come a long way with advancing our knowledge and social awareness so that stigmas are lowered and help is provided. But, I also believe that we are not doing nearly enough to educate people into what it really is and its effect. I think that educating people on a sensitive topic, such as metal health, needs to be done to a better point because of the help it serves.
A little back story on me: I am an extremely picky eater. I always have been, and I think it actually got worse as I grew up. Living at home, it was normal for my family that I was this picky, so my mom would often make me a separate dinner if she knew I didn’t like something she was making. When I moved out for university, I was still picky but I also discovered that I was a very lazy cook. Being picky and lazy didn’t really get me anywhere, so during first year, I nearly always just ate pizza pockets. But, because of my laziness, and a little bit of my anxiety, I stopped eating as much as I should have.
To me at the time, I didn’t feel that anything was wrong; it is not until now that I see pictures of myself and realize how unhealthy I was. Nevertheless, I was eating less, and suddenly my dad started questioning if I had an eating disorder. I was shocked and scoffed at him, denying it each time. He kept asking, and I started getting annoyed because I knew I didn’t, and he was asking without even having background knowledge of what an eating disorder was. During first year, I was also diagnosed with having a general anxiety disorder, which I kind of always knew about, but never actually got treatment for until the diagnosis was made. Looking back at my first year of university, my eating habits were a mixture of things as to why I didn’t eat what I should have, but my mental health was also a factor that I wasn’t even conscious of.
I, then, recently started to get the same comments from my manager at work, where she kept asking about my eating habits. I started getting uncomfortable and just denied everything again. She then asked me, “Are you anorexic?” and suddenly I got mad. I was so upset that people were so fast assume things, and not think twice about what they were even asking. Some of my closest friends do struggle with eating disorders, and I know what they go through to make it day to day.
Although there are countless mental illnesses, and different spectrums for each, I think teaching people about them as best as we can, needs to be done. Days such as #BellLetsTalk are coming up, which is a great initiative to get the conversation starting, but it should not only happen once a year. Some might see mental illness as a taboo subject, or something that they might not even believe in. But the reality is that according to CAMH, mental illness is present in 1 in every 5 Canadians, but not nearly everyone is getting help. Ensuring that we are present in our loved one’s lives, making sure that we are healthy to help others and that we are aware of what is happening around us are just some quick first steps that we can take towards a healthier future.