It’s flu season, and you know what that means—a call from your parents to head on over to the Health Center to get this year’s flu shot. Trends like swine and bird are so last year, and people all over the country are scrambling to get their hands on whatever animal is this year’s flu culprit. However, what a lot of people don’t know is that there’s another disease plaguing the nation, but this one doesn’t have a vaccine and it doesn’t sound an alarm. And people who have this disease may not even know.
It’s mental illness and, just like the flu, it comes in a ton of different strains with their own respective severities and symptoms—anywhere from depression to schizophrenia. Sadly, there is so little known about these illnesses because they leave no physical scar (on their own). Sufferers are commonly seen as “attention-seekers,” are told “it’s all in their heads” and are quickly called “crazy” only because no one knows where to begin helping them—often, psychiatrists don’t even help. In addition, people who suffer from a mental illness don’t know how to deal with it because no one else knows how to either. And unfortunately, because no one knows what these illness can actually do to someone, people often claim to have them for exactly the reason sufferers constantly fight against—attention. So, hopefully this article will clear a few things up about mental illnesses—what they are, how to deal with them and why it’s not “cool” to have one.
First, what is mental illness? Mental illness has a lot of different faces, and each come with their own connotation and denotation—insomnia, eating disorders, Autism, anxiety, OCD and paranoia, just to name a few. Each of these illnesses reveal themselves in different ways. People have learned to look for some of these because the signs are clearer, like Autism; however, many of these illnesses can go dormant for extended periods of time so that the sufferer may not even know they have the disease at all. Others can mask themselves as less serious things, in the way that anxiety can be mistaken for heightened social awkwardness or a sensitivity to stressful situations. And, like anxiety and OCD, many of these illnesses come in varying severities. One can have mild OCD, in which things have to be in order or when one prefers to do things in sets of a certain number, or one can have more serious OCD where the sufferer cannot function at work or in their social relationships because they have to repeat the same things over and over. These illnesses enslave people in their own heads and it can really be horrible—not at all desirable. Not every mental illness is on the level of Shutter Island or A Beautiful Mind; besides, mental illness should not be a plot technique for a twist ending. Mental illnesses should in no way be glamorized, and they’re not from a movie. How can we help real sufferers with the reality of their illness?
To quote the amazing Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, “Of course it’s happening inside your head…but why on earth should that mean it’s not real?” Although from a fictitious character (and differing from its original context), this quote really exemplifies the attitude needed to address the subject of mental illnesses. They need to be treated as real illnesses. You wouldn’t make a child with the flu stay in school if he/she’s just thrown up. Why would you keep a student who has had an anxiety attack from a place they are comfortable in so they can calm down? The number one thing you can do for someone who claims to have a mental illness is to believe them. No matter what. If it is real, (and who are we to say it isn’t?), the sufferer just needs support from people they can trust enough to tell. So, if you have a friend who asks you to order for them or stay home from a party with them because they get nervous when ordering or in crowds, do it. Do not make them do that thing in an attempt to help them “get over their fear.” There’s nothing that can be “gotten over” in this way. They don’t need you to do what you think will help, they need you to listen to them. They know what they need and they need you to help them—help them take breaths and help them focus on something real and not all the things going on inside their head.
And I know it can sometimes be taxing, but I encourage you to try to be patient. People who suffer from these things already feel like a burden on the people around them; the worst thing you can do is make them feel annoying or high-maintenance. In addition to listening, you can celebrate with them over little victories. For someone with depression, a victory can be getting them to go outside or even getting dressed that day. For someone with ADHD, a victory could be completing an assignment without getting too distracted. I’m not saying you need to throw them a party and make it a huge deal (that would probably be a negative rather than positive experience), but give them a “good job” or a high five or a smile at the end of a hard day or hard quarter. Help them see that they are beating it through the small stuff, that their illness doesn’t control them.
There’s nothing “cool” about having a mental illness. It’s a serious issue that’s even taken some heat from a lot of people given the amount of school shootings that have been happening lately. Yes, people who do those evil things are almost always suffering from some form of mental illness or instability, but we must not look at mental illnesses as evil. In the same way people frown upon (to say the least) racial or socio-economic profiling, we must not profile people with mental illnesses as time bombs, as volatile, or as “crazy.” These sufferers are regular people, who have to fight for their mind every day. And they are so very, very brave. Because, of course, our mental health is all in our heads, but it manifests itself in reality and clothes itself in truth. And it’s sometimes very hard to see past. So, find the little victories in life and always be there for a friend in need. You never know what’s going on up there