Mental Health. When you think about depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, or the “dreaded” schizophrenia…. What comes to mind? Do you think of the poor person who is struggling with the battle of the disease or do you think of a guy who is on a bus and cuts someones head off because he was ridding the world of a demon? I hate the image of mental illness the media is implanting on watchers. The media has taken mental illness and given it this absolutely terrible, scary spin. It seems that people can’t get passed the diagnosis in order to understand and to learn about the person behind it. No matter what the diagnosis is… diabetes… asthma… cancer… depression… schizophrenia… there is always a person behind it, right? So why is mental illness any different than diabetes or asthma? Why is it people are more likely to support a person with diabetes than a person who struggles with bipolar? When in reality aspects of mental illness affect your daily routine and functioning a lot more than diabetes… Is it that diabetes or asthma are more physical illnesses and there are definite tests that give you your answer than with mental illness? There’s no real test to tell you that you have depression. I don’t know what it is that makes people think differently about it, but I truly wish I did….
But if you think about it… how scared must that guy have been? Just put it into your head that the person sitting next to you is a demon… now how do you feel?… How about that everyone around you is out to kill you? How do you feel now? What about if there is someone behind you telling you to turn around, there is someone to the right of you telling you to turn right, someone to your left telling you to turn left and someone in front of you that is telling you to walk forward? Now what do you do? Who do you listen to? That is just to enlighten some of you. It’s not so easy when you think about it… and this is something that they will struggle with their whole life.
A very dear friend of mine, not too long ago, said “we are humans in this spinning wonder world, not anything greater not anything less”. There seem to be a lot of people to forget that they are humans such as anyone else and that each and every person deserves the same kindness and compassion. So when you meet a person who has a mental illness don’t shun them, embrace them… they may have some of the best stories to share with you.
