“Mental health isn’t contagious.
It can be genetic.
Mental health isn’t a joke
Though we do sometimes laugh about it.”
D Kai Wilson, talk at a mental health group in 2005
One of the biggest things I’ve found out about mental health in the last nine years is that there are no concrete answers.
Its kinda hard to look back on the last several years and realise I was diagnosed with a mental health illness at nineteen.
Nineteen.
Imagine it for a moment – you’re just out of high school – finding ‘your’ place in the world, and suddenly, you get a bombshell dropped on you. You’re not ‘just moody’, you’re depressed and its not as easy as to just snap out of as you may have been lead to believe.
And though things have advanced, incredibly, in the nine years since my diagnosis (and the slightly later one of bipolar disorder, seven years ago) things still haven’t changed ENOUGH.
True, for some people its now hip, and important to have a label that says that thier behaviour has a reason – its used as an excuse more and more nowadays. A celeb’s doing something wierd?
Oh, of course, they’re depressed, forgive them for it.
And yet, on the other side of the sword, people aren’t supported and are sometimes, flat out rejected when they find themselves in the same situation.
I say that we should extend the tolerance only as far as supporting people through the consequences, not to outright forgiveness.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 7:11 am and is filed under Information, Mental wellness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
