In honor of mental health awareness week, I’d like to share
a few words.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the negative stigma
that seems to go along with the mental health field and I just want to rant a little bit about the importance that I see in addressing these issues head-on.
I feel like there are a lot of people in this world who live
their lives day by day trying to live the
dream on the outside and fight the
demons on the inside in the dark with only a flashlight to help guide them.
And while I totally get the desire to keep things like mental health concealed
and try to conquer them on your own, I also believe that there comes a point
when it will get to be too hard, and that could potentially be scary, dangerous,
and/or damaging.
I think I’ve briefly mentioned this in a past blog, but for
the sake of the point I’m trying to make (and for a much more current update),
I’ll give a recap. Spring of my freshman year at Whitworth, I started seeing a
psychiatric nurse practitioner who told me that she suspected that I had Bipolar
II disorder. When I came back to the dorm that day, I had incredibly mixed
feelings about our appointment because I had always seen things like bipolar as
something that couldn’t be a reality to someone like me. I saw it as something
that was wrong with me and sometimes
I still do, but I have also come to really understand the disorder and am at a
point of acceptance with it. When you’re in the moment, things don’t look like
they’re getting better, and you often actually feel like you’re getting worse,
but the biggest thing that I turn to when I feel this way is my transcript.
That spring, my grades were the worst they ever have been (and my GPA is still
thanking me for that). But after I started being treated for bipolar, my grades
have gotten a little better each semester. That may seem like something small,
but to see a gradual improvement like that is reassuring to me that I am on the
right path.
I am sharing this because I really truly want people to
understand that it is okay to seek help when you need it. It’s time for those
stigmas to get trampled on, because they are only holding society back from
living happy, healthy lives. I have had several friends tell me that they are
thinking about going to therapy but don’t because their either ashamed or
afraid of what people may think or what they may think about themselves, but to
me that is just a sign of a strong individual.
I hope this wasn’t too heavy; I just hate knowing that
people I love and care about are out there right now letting outside pressures
hold them back from getting the help they need, and if you’re reading this and
that’s you, I hope you know that you can always talk to me about it.
Anyway, my rant is over. I encourage you to think
about and educate yourself this week on this matter, because the more we understand it,
the less likely we are to deny or shame its existence.
