Why is there such a stigma around depression and mental illness in general ?
Who among us creates this thought pattern and passes it on to others ? Creating this mindset in the general population that it is somehow less good, less decent, less strong, less nice, and even dangerous, catching and nasty, to have a mental illness or to simply be depressed.
My husband, who is also my best friend, always tells me, “You are blessed not to have a mental illness”, and I do feel blessed. I would far sooner have the physical illness that I have, than to live coping with depression or worse. Unless you have lived it, you cannot conceive how life shattering, life emptying and totally overwhelming it is.
And no, I can’t really know how bad it is, I can only imagine the feeling from what others have told me, from what I see first hand, and what I have read. But I can see how others close to me suffer. Suffer not only from the illness itself, but maybe worse, from the stigma surrounding the whole label ‘Mental Illness’.
The stigma means that many never tell anyone else how they are feeling. The stigma means that many die alone, seeing that as the only way to stop the pain. The stigma means that some of your friends, and probably your family too, are suffering this horrific illness and you don’t even realise…
What can we do ? I don’t have any magic answers. But what I do have is the ability and desire to force people to see this illness, I can write about it, I can post about it now and then on my private Facebook page so that people I know will think about it. I can be a minute cog in a massive wheel and help raise awareness about mental illness in general, especially depression. You can too. Please.
