Deadly Stigma

Growing up I had a couple teacher brave enough to try to get me the help I needed for my obvious depression and anxiety. If I had been failing or had been disruptive in class they would have had "reason" and backing of administration but I was a "good" kid. But I was so obviously hurting that these people reached out and tried to get my resistant and often angry mother to see I needed help. All she could see was the stigma. I don't blame her. That was all most other people can see most of the time. In her own way, she was trying to protect me. It almost killed me. In the end her fear of the stigma of mental illness killed her.

The stigma of mental illness is so strong people who care about me will sometime try to separate me from it. "We all have depression sometimes" they will say. Or "Depression is different" meaning different from those other mental illnesses...those 'crazy' ones, like bipolar or schizophrenia. Let me tell you, people, it isn't different. The stigma of mental illness effects us all. The stigma that is applied to a person with schizophrenia will apply to a person with depression. It will interfere with both getting the medical help and social support they need. The stigma of mental illness and the stigma of persuing help for mental illness kills people. It destroys lives. It is the stigma that makes it okay for insurance comanies to under-insure thier mental health policies. It is the stigma that makes it okay to ignore funding for community mental health services. It is the stigma that prevents more funding going toward researching the causes and early intervention of mental illness. 

I have chronic, debilitating depression and generalized anxiety disorder. I was like this as early as I can remember. I thought about suicide and death before I hit puberty. I didn't start getting any kind of treatment until I was 19 years old and I didn't get comprehensive mental health treatment until I was 25 years old. It is a combination of loving friends, pure luck and hanging by my fingernails force of will that I survived long enough to get the help I needed. I survived and continue to survive the stigma of mental illness.

So what is my point... Stop the stigma. Stop the stigma of mental illness in conversation. Talk about mental illness without shame. Stop the stigma in your own thoughts. Think about mental illness, see it as it is, as of our greatest global health challenges. Stop the stigma because, in my opinion, it isn't the mental illness that kills us. The stigma kills.