Stigma Surrounding Mental Illness

Pick any high school in the world, and imagine the conversations you will catch wind of while walking through the campus. No matter the country, the region, or the city, there will always be chatter filling the halls with anything from complaints to gossip. One of the aspects of conversation that unfortunately has snuck its way into every-day small talk are phrases like, “They’re insane!”, “She’s so bipolar.”, or “What does he have to be depressed about? His life isn’t even that bad.” At what point did it become “cool” to make fun of an illness? If we ever hope to see a decline in the suicide rates flooding today’s news, we need to take action. Awareness needs to be raised of the stigma surrounding mental illness. Growing up, I would hear these phrases used amongst my peers and think almost nothing of it. There was no class called “Mental Illness and How to Handle It.” We were never taught what it means to be clinically depressed, just that if our friends seemed withdrawn they might need to see the adjustment counselor. We were old enough to learn that the brain controls our body in science class but not deemed mature enough to learn how it can get sick. This lack of awareness allows stigma to be learned from others at a young age.

I didn’t know those “crazy people” could be the average person you pass on the street everyday. Movies are filled with scenes of patients strapped down to their beds while the nurses administer sedatives because they are “uncontrollable”. These images enforce the stigma of mental illness. It was for these reasons I was afraid to talk to my parents about my own mental health struggle until I started high