Something that means a lot to me is normalizing mental health and bringing suicide awareness. Our society is greatly affected by the stigma that comes with both mental health issues and suicide.
In recent years, strides have been made to increase awareness about mental health issues and to fight the stigma that having a mental health issue somehow makes someone less of a person. However, there are still great lengths to be made.
One of the problems concerning mental health is that there is still this idea that men are weak if they admit to having a mental health problem. This is problematic because this also affects boys. By growing up in a culture where “men don’t cry”, boys are taught to hide their feelings; a lot of guys don’t talk about their feelings and problems, and this can become more troublesome if they are dealing with mental health issues.
It saddens me that by going to a counselor/therapist, you are seen as weak. Even though it is completely normal to see a therapist, people just don’t talk about it. While it isn’t hard to figure out why people don’t share that they see a therapist, I think it would be beneficial if more and more people talked about; it would allow people to see that more people visit a therapist than they think. This in turn would help lead to the normalization of therapy and mental health.
There is also this view about mental health that it is not as important as physical health. This is something that is progressing towards the right direction in recent years, but there are still people, mainly older generations, that don’t believe in mental health issues. In a lot of cases, mental health problems are more chronic than physical health problems.
Throughout my entire high school career, only one of my teachers talked about mental health and that she recognized that that could be a reason for missing school, just like taking a sick day. I came from a state that has high suicide rates, including teen suicide rates. It is discerning to me that high schools don’t take a more active approach to mental health issues; high school is a critical point in a young person’s life.
In high school, after a suicide and an attempted suicide of two students in one semester, my high school implemented a program that helped raise suicide awareness. I co-led the program and I would like to focus my issue on bringing suicide awareness to high schoolers. We can’t pretend that it doesn’t happen; it’s a sad truth that children are killing themselves. Not only is suicide awareness, which plays into mental health awareness, important, but also giving people the tools on how to handle a situation where someone comes to them and tells them that they are suicidal. Most adults don’t exactly know how to handle this situation, let alone kids.
Even as I say that I want to focus on mental health and suicide awareness for teens, I’m disturbed by the fact that most suicides are completed by middle aged people. Is this because we are more focused on teens? Is this because we don’t normalize the fact that middle aged people have mental health issues too?
I agree with you. I don’t know if mental illness is on the rise or if people are finally becoming aware of it. however, it has become a huge issue in our society today. It is also represented in a negative light. This makes people afraid to get help for themselves and their family. mental illness has a wide range of effects, anywhere from suicide attempts to even anxiety. but people are afraid to get help.
Thanks for sharing this, anm272. I appreciated the narration of your experience that led to a disconnection between so few people mentioning mental health in high school to the larger education issue that suggests too many of us view mental illness as a sign of weakness, or as a trivial problem as you suggest with comparison between mental and physical health (should there even be a distinction between the two? I can see a good reason in that treatments are often different, but also wonder if what happens mentally is not also very much dependent on “physical” components).
It sounds like you are on a good path to focus on high schoolers and their mental health education (though, you do hint at some potential questions that have you consider older folks). Do you want to write directly to high school students? To parents/guardians (directly or indirectly)? To the general public to create awareness? To advocate for policy changes of some kind? What sorts of attitudes and/or actions do you want people to take up do you think? Lots of possibilities! What do you think?
Looking forward to reading more!