Source: Michigan Medicine

As someone who has experienced mental health issues throughout a majority my life, I feel that there far too many problems with how society treats and educates people about mental illnesses. While it is true that we, as a society, have drastically improved mental health practices over time, we still have a very long way to go.

The first time I experienced a program related to mental health was in middle school. Adults who surround me at the time heard rumors that my parents were separating and that I had been talking to my friends about how upset I felt, and I was sent to a counselor. While there, the counselor told me that I was simply angry about my family situation and that I needed to take my anger out at home. She told me that I needed to be careful when talking about how I felt and that school wasn’t the place to discuss my family issues. To say the least, I was very uncomfortable with how my feelings were manipulated and that I was told to just internalize them instead of being able to talk to my friends. I was not angry at all about the divorce. In fact, I was struggling with depression. After that appointment, I took her advice to keep things inside for a while, and my situation continued to worsen.

Another experience I had that negatively impacted my mental health rather than improving it or giving me positive strategies to cope with how I was feeling was with my family members. When asking for guidance from my elders, especially my grandparents, they often told me that I was “too young to have any worries” and that I should just “stop being dramatic” and I would be fine. Though they likely had good intentions, I just wanted to be heard. I wanted real solutions.

Source: The Hechinger Report

Most of the issues I faced with mental health became increasingly difficult in part because I felt invalidated. I felt alienated from my peers and family who had less experience with depression and anxiety. Nobody seemed to understand why I distanced myself from my friends, or why I started to produce work that was far below the standard that I had previously been meeting. Not even my teachers seemed to notice my willingness to participate and eagerness to learn starting to deteriorate. The public in general is not well educated about mental health, especially in small towns like the one that I grew up in. In my own case, I was not taught about depression, anxiety, PTSD, or anything of that nature until freshman year of high school. Even then, we did not go any deeper than surface level definitions of specific illnesses and never learned much about how to help others or ourselves when facing those conditions.

It is shocking that our students are so under educated about mental illnesses as today’s children are getting more and more diagnoses of anxiety and depression. According to the CDC ,the number of children diagnosed with anxiety and depression has rose from 5.4 percent in 2003 to 8.4 percent after 2012. Not only that, but in the United States only 41 percent of people with a mental illness were able to receive any sort of medical treatment for their conditions. These statistics tell us something incredibly important, which is that our approach for treating mental health conditions is not working well enough.

Throughout this series, I plan on researching more about the healthcare system and the policies currently in place regarding mental health. I also plan to examine the laws in place about mental health education and propose possible changes that could improve how people view peers with mental illnesses. I feel as though these issues are especially important in small towns and rural communities, like the place that I grew up in. It is incredibly important that we understand how to help those struggling with mental illness just as much as we learn to help those with visible, physical illnesses and conditions. I feel as though we should have access to resources and education no matter where we were born and where we go to school.

Sources:

CDC. “Data and Statistics on Children’s Mental Health.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 19 Apr. 2019, http://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html.

National Counsel for Behavioral Health. “5 Surprising Mental Health Statistics.” Mental Health First Aid, 6 Feb. 2019, http://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/2019/02/5-surprising-mental-health-statistics/.