*Potential Trigger Warning*
If you’ve never had to hear the argument, “But you don’t look sick!” as a way to discredit your feelings, you may be one of the luckiest people out there. As I write this, I’m suffering from a sinus infection. Just by looking at me, though, you wouldn’t be able to tell that a single thing was off (unless you caught me blowing my nose). If I went up to you and complained about my congestion, would you patronize me and say, “You don’t look congested,” or would you sympathize with my inability to breathe? I’m willing to bet your response would be the latter. So why, when we discover that a friend or colleague or neighbor is suffering from anorexia or depression or schizophrenia, is the former often our first reaction? You would never try to discredit my congestion based upon the fact that you can’t see the mucous, so why do we try to discredit depression based upon somebody’s smile?
Mental illness is an epidemic. It’s an epidemic that many would rather brush under the rug than strive to eliminate. It includes anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, depression disorders, eating disorders, and more, and it is leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths, and even more broken hearts, every year. According to an article published by The Huffington Post, approximately one in four adults suffer some form of mental health disorder. Only about 25% of that 25% feel like others are understanding towards them and what they are going through, and in 2012, 60% of adults did not receive the medical attention they needed for their disorders. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, serious mental illnesses cost Americans an average of 193.2 billion dollars in earnings every year as a consequence of a lack of treatment.
Why do so many mental illnesses go untreated? Many insurance plans do not offer adequate coverage for mental health treatment. Because of the stigma against mental illnesses, sufferers are often discriminated against, despite antidiscrimination laws, by family, friends, and in the work place, due to the fear caused by misunderstandings and misconceptions about mental illness. This fear often leads to violence against individuals suffering from mental illness, and leads to sufferers neglecting to seek treatment out of their own fear of rejection and further discrimination. Mental illnesses are discredited as overemotional, overreacting, or unreal, and they do not receive the attention they deserve.
This article was inspired by my friend Gwen*. Gwen suffered from what started as anorexia and eventually merged with the purging of bulimia, and it became incredibly severe midway through the school year. She tried to keep it hidden from everyone: her friends, her instructors, her RA… for a while, she succeeded. Nobody paid attention when we went to dinner after a meeting and she didn’t order anything. None of us noticed how at lunch, she picked apart her sandwich to make it look eaten. It wasn’t until weeks later that I finally realized I hadn’t seen her consume anything but water in ages, and later that evening after I convinced, maybe even bullied, her into eating a turkey club, she disappeared for a while to make herself throw it back up.
From that point on, most of her friends at school knew that Gwen was suffering from an eating disorder, but there were only two of us that knew how severe it truly was. It was only two of us that were on the other end of the phone when she was too weak to make it back to her dorm, when she had passed out in the bathroom, and when she was struggling with keeping her food down. It was only two of us that made concerned eye contact when she told us as a group that she would be going into treatment, but did not know when she could start. It was only two of us that had to keep straight faces and fight down the anxiety with each passing week, because we were positive that she was going to die before she ever made it to treatment. It was only me who broke down in tears that semester because I thought we were going to lose her.
Gwen didn’t look sick. At least, not to the naked eye. For a long time, her noticeable weight loss was minimal. Her peeling nails were hidden beneath layers of shiny lacquer, and the lack of light in her eyes was attributed to the stress of college. But, just because we couldn’t see her disease every second of the day did not mean that she did not have one. The two of us who became closest to her throughout the year came to see it in her third water bottle of the hour, in her eyes drooping at 6 pm when she was so hungry she could barely stay awake, and in the tears drying on her face as we helped her to bed. You never would have seen that side of her, but we saw it almost every day. You did not know that she was suffering from anything, but we knew that she was suffering from everything. And we never would have dared to tell her that she did not look like she was sick.
“I don’t look sick. That’s what I always told myself, what I always see in people’s eyes when I tell them what goes on behind closed doors. I don’t look sick. I’m not skinny enough to have an eating disorder, I’m not frail enough or broken enough or sick enough. But that was just on the surface, and you can’t judge someone’s mental illness based on their appearance.”
Not every illness presents itself in a visibly physical form. Even non-mental diseases, like diabetes, do not make themselves known to strangers. And we would never tell someone that we knew had diabetes that they did not look sick, either. Would we?
“It scared me more than I can say, and I kept telling myself, ‘You’re not skinny enough to have an eating disorder. You’re not sick enough to need treatment.’ Deep down I knew I was sick and I knew that no matter what, I deserved to get better, and I needed help to do it. But I never questioned why I thought I wasn’t sick enough. I never questioned what made me think that I wasn’t good enough or small enough or deserving of help.”
At school, Gwen was not confined to her bed, clammy skin covered in sweat, and too weak to lift her head. She charged through her days, went to classes and meetings, and fought to keep what she was going through as quiet as she could. She called us for help when she was desperate, and apologized for bothering us after. To this day, I don’t know her motivations for trying to keep what she was going through to herself, and I’m afraid to ask. I don’t know if she thought we wouldn’t believe her, or if she thought we wouldn’t want to be a part of it. I don’t know, but whatever her reasoning was, she was completely valid in it. I didn’t understand what she was going through, not fully, but I knew that it was real and it was worthy of our help.
Her Resident Director didn’t agree. During a meeting where her eating disorder came into conversation, her RD told Gwen that she couldn’t be anorexic because she didn’t look like she was sick, and that if she continued to rely on the two of us, she would lose us.
“I remember him telling me I couldn’t have the particular eating disorder I claimed to have because I wasn’t skinny enough, and that only really skinny girls had that eating disorder. I was told that I had to start taking care of my problems myself, that if I kept leaning on the people I cared about, they’d stop wanting me around. According to him, it wasn’t fair of me to reach out to people, because they had their own stuff going on and I’d drive them away. I was pushing them away, he said. I was going to lose them.”
I cannot even begin to express how disgusted and sickened I was by the nerve of a college official, supposedly trained to handle situations such as this, telling Gwen her illness was not real, and that her friends would not be there for her when she needed us most. And you can bet everything you’ve got that I reported him.
And that is why I’m writing this, and why I hope you’ve made it this far through. No matter what you are suffering from: depression, anxiety, anorexia, or any other mental illness in or off the books, your illness is valid, and there isn’t a single person out there who has the right to invalidate it based upon how healthy you may appear to be. Trust your friends to be there for you; that is what friends are for. We’re there for the best times, but we’re there for the worst ones, too, and you’re not going to lose us because you reach out. We suffer right alongside you, wondering what we can do to make it better.
So please, reach out.
And if you’re lucky enough to not be suffering from any of the above, don’t make the same mistakes Gwen’s RD did.
“If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from a year of intensive treatments and programs, it’s that eating disorders don’t have a body type. Eating disorders don’t discriminate; no mental disorders do. They come in all races, genders, ages and weights. No matter who you are, you deserve to be safe and healthy and happy. No matter who you are, you are worthy of getting help.”
Never make someone suffering a mental illness feel like they’re worth less because of it, and never tell them they aren’t really sick. Watch out for your friends. If you don’t, what’s the point of even having them?
All the thanks in the world to Gwen for letting me tell some of her story. I love you, and I’m always here for you <3
*Name has been changed