A Reflection on Mental Health Awareness and Overcoming Stigma

Mental health issues or disorders, whichever you prefer to call them, for the most part, have always been a negative little secret in society. This stigma is due to the extreme cases you hear about on the news, the over-dramatization on television, the lack of public knowledge, and the fear that was instilled in people regarding mental illness hundreds of years ago.

Historical Stigmatization of Mental Illness

These mental illnesses have been surrounded by negative stigmas going back as far as the 5th century B.

C. People then were treated like outcasts, criminals, and less than human. People were and are still labeled as weird, crazy, nut jobs, and psycho, and that’s naming a few of the better names. I believe that there is a positive side to mental disorders. You must be willing to embrace the illness and be open to the positive.

Challenging Stigmas Through Education

It has been suggested that some people with mental illnesses may be more creative; not saying that you need to have a mental illness to be creative.

For example, Ludwig Van Beethoven suffered from bipolar disorder, Charles Darwin suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Thomas Edison suffered from social anxiety disorder. Stigma is a quality or trait that someone possesses but another person or group does not like or agree with. I think in this day and age, and there is a stigma about everything and anything; we are so concerned about letting everyone know about how things or people make us feel we forget to stop and think about how it makes the people we are talking about feel.

I feel the stigmas about mental illness and every other thing people do not like could be curbed at least a little if we educate ourselves with credible information. Take a moment to learn before we speak, stop believing everything we hear on television, and put in the effort to understand. Public attitudes towards mental illnesses could be changed with proper education and information.

Promoting Positive Change through Education

In order to make the education process happen, we first must be open to change and willing to accept new information. I believe if this were to happen, so many people would be able to quit living in the dark and seek treatment for their illnesses. We need to bring not just mental illness light but other issues with huge stigmas, such as cancer, STDs, HIV/AIDS, and same-sex relationships/marriages, to name a few, to the light as well. We need, no, we must educate ourselves.

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