f you had been diagnosed
with a broken arm how open
would you be to share your diagnosis with family and friends? The odds are most people wouldn’t have a large amount of angst sharing information about their physical health with those close to them because there isn’t a stigma around having a broken arm. Society doesn’t view a person as weak, flawed or necessarily dangerous when they suffer from physical health challenges.
But what about your mental
health?
Mental health is much more
invisible and harder to quantify
and understand than physical
illness. It doesn’t show up on a
lab test or x-ray. Nothing is
more human than to fear what
we don’t understand. When
that fear is strong enough, we
create stigmas and judge things
as bad or even sometimes evil.
It is these stigmas surrounding mental illness that keep many
people from seeking treatment.
No one wants to come forward
and speak about their mental
illness if they believe it will
threaten their job, a promotion, relationships or pride. We are
quick to label cancer survivors
as hero’s but fail to celebrate the heroic survivors of debilitating
and persistent suicidal urges.
Approximately 1 in 5 people suffer from a mental illness at some point in their life. This means that everyone either knows someone with a mental illness or has a mental illness themselves. Depression accounts for more disability than any other disease worldwide. Suicide rates in the U.S. have increased by 30 percent since 2000. The fact is it doesn’t matter your race, religion, gender, age or economic background, mental illness can affect anyone’s family.
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