Fuck Yeah Medicine

I find it insulting when people insist to a suicidal person that “they have so much to live for,” and that “they are stronger” than their suicidal impulse. As if the person in question isn’t entirely aware of those things, as if the chemical, neural imbalances or possibly external factors in them that are creating those feelings can easily be “overcome” if only they’re “strong” enough. Does that imply that they reason they’re suicidal in the first place is because they’re not strong? That they’re weak, in fact, for feeling the way that they do? It is not encouraging or helpful to say these things to a suicidal person, in my opinion. It smacks of shaming them; “oh, nothing’s really wrong, you’d be just fine if only you were strong enough. You should get on that.”

Suicidal people who are still suicidal and not dead have already proven their strength, as far as I’m concerned. And even those who commit suicide and “succeed” in the end can’t fairly be discounted as weak - everyone makes mistakes, sometimes deadly ones, and theirs wasn’t even their fault provided it was inspired by a mental illness. I’ve had plenty of people try to bring me back from the brink of a devastating depression by telling me that I’m so much stronger than it, and I can safely say that all I felt in those moments was shame, for not being strong enough to simply not feel that way. I’m not trying to speak for anyone else, but as far as I’m concerned, hearing that hurts more than it helps when you’re that low. So fuck you, I don’t need to hear that I’m stronger than my depression. I knew that already, it doesn’t change how I feel. You can’t sprinkle magic sparkle unicorn words over a chemical imbalance and make it go away. Don’t trivialize, invalidate, what I’m going through like that.

—Jesse Eisenberg

(Source: copulates, via breakingstigmatism)

Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation. If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life.
It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.

—

(Source: sherunsfromdarkness, via maiamorgan)

oneheadtoanother:

Closing the Gap for Children’s Mental Health
By Darcy Gruttadaro, Director of the NAMI Child and Adolescent Action Center

Half of all mental illness begins by age 14. Many people do not know that. They also do not know that, on average, eight to 10 years will pass…

(via breakingstigmatism)

healthofmind:

A report on some research articles relating to stigmas on mental health. As well as some well-written words about the problems these stigmas cause.

I’ve already complained about stigmas on this blog’s pages, but even for me its sometimes hard to remember that they DO exist. Here’s a few bullet points from the article:

• In a survey of 505 medical students…revealed that 53.3 percent of medical students who reported high levels of depressive symptoms were worried that revealing their illness would be risky.
• Almost 62 percent of the same students said asking for help would mean the student’s coping skills were inadequate.
• However, the results show that although believing in neurobiological causes for these disorders increased support for professional treatment, it did nothing to alleviate stigma.
• The results show that, in fact, the effect increased community rejection of the person described in the vignettes.

As a medical student- I concur

(via breakingstigmatism)