It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. While every month is Mental Health Awareness Month to me, I want my non-mental health-field friends to know a few things. Maybe I’ve mentioned these before — I can be quite loquacious at times and certainly in this blog — but I feel the need to repeat myself. I have a bad memory, too.
Depression is awful. You’re not just sad when you have depression; you lose the ability to care about and enjoy things you once loved doing. And that sucks. It’s like the whole world is black and white, and nothing makes you feel good at all. You can’t shower (in my experience) or do anything to improve your personal hygiene. Just thinking about taking a shower is too much work. You isolate. You don’t want to hang out with friends. You just want to be alone, and even though you feel the need to recharge, you don’t ever get recharged. You stay exhausted and lonely. You miss school or work. You get written up. Nobody understands. People think you’re being selfish or lazy – or the worst – people think you’re not being grateful as if that has anything to do with the neurons and chemicals in my brain. You lose your appetite or start to binge eat because your depression has triggered your eating disorder. Your sleep schedule gets messed up. The pain you feel is deep and you just want to drop to your knees and moan or scream. A guttural noise that expresses your misery.
That’s just a preview. And that’s just depression.
Anxiety sucks, too. Sometimes it’s worse than the depression. I think I wrote a blog about that, too. I also have a rare personality disorder, and as previously mentioned, an eating disorder. I can detail each condition, it’s just too much.
I don’t want to make this about me, though. I’m just one person experiencing depression and other mental health conditions when actually 1 in 5 U.S. adults will experience mental illness each year, but only half will receive the help they need. Now that sucks. And if that’s not bad enough, the average delay is 11 years between the onset of mental health symptoms and getting treatment. That’s insane. I say that, but it took me even longer.
1 in 20 U.S. adults experience serious mental illness each year — think Bipolar Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder (that’s me) and Schizophrenia. Not nearly enough will receive treatment either.
Something that’s eye-opening to me is that 1 in 6 youth experience a mental health disorder each year. And that 50% of all life-time mental illness begins by age 14 and 75% by age 24. This is exactly why we need to be talking about mental illness all the time. If we did, parents and teachers could better recognize warning signs of mental illness which could lead to early intervention, which could save a child/teen years of struggling.
I had my daughter evaluated for ADHD, which she did have, but the psychiatrist suggested she go to therapy first for self-esteem and anxiety issues. His exact words were “Let’s get her into therapy now so she’s not going to therapy her entire life.” I must’ve made a face because he quickly said unless you like going to therapy, lol. I don’t love therapy but I have been doing it most of my entire adult life. But I digress.
We have to start talking about this. There is nothing wrong with getting or asking for help. Because let me tell you this: suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among children aged 10-14. Our children need to be able to talk to us about their feelings, and we need to listen without judgement. To be able to find them help. To advocate for them.
The time is now, friends.
Let’s talk.
