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| World Mental Health Day 2013 |
Today is a very important day for bringing awareness to Mental Health Awareness. There isn't one person on this planet that doesn't know someone who has suffered in silence with a mental health disorder. In silence because they fear the stigma that goes with the label of a mental health condition. They live in isolation and shame and try and function to a level that they can pass as being ok. Many people know someone who is so ill that they can no longer hide their condition and they are judged...talked about and pitied. Why can't they just pull themselves together? Get over it! They aren't really trying, are they? We've all got pressures..what makes them so weak? How many times has a person with a mental health condition heard theses comments made about them or worse...around them...because they obviously have a problem with their hearing too....it's all in the head stuff and ears are part of the head, right? Urgh...
People use the above terminology without understanding what mental health conditions really are. To feel a little sad..isn't depression. To like a clean house doesn't make you a person living with OCD. Being suddenly angry...is not having a psychotic break. Sadly its the same as any illness...ignorance of the facts takes over the reality of the situation. And the only way around this is for people who live with mental health conditions or work in the mental health community to start talking about it. Providing the knowledge to break down the labels and stigma that is attached to the ignorance out there. That is why today is so important.
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| A person with a Mental Health Disorder will feel isolated... |
The list of conditions is vast and far too many for me to go into on my humble little blog but there are many organisations out there ready and willing to help. Please...educate yourself because you may be in need of help yourself...or you know someone who is struggling. Please don't leave them in the silence..alone.
Recently on my tumblr a person I follow posted the following words..and when I began putting together todays post I knew it would fit..and makes one hell of a point....
"Depression is humiliating.
It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation.
Depression is humiliating.
If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too.
Depression is humiliating.
No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression.
Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged."
Thank you for reading...and I hope you are never troubled by a mental health disorder...but please make yourself aware that others are...and need support and understanding...
Namaste
~Red~
NB: All images where found online and therefore not my creation but the hard work of another and I would love to give credit where its due...so as ever..if you know who they are please pass on the info. But thank you to them. The words from tumblr also falls into this catagory sadly...but huge thanks to whoever did write it. R.
