We thought our son would be safe in a private mental health facility.  Through no fault of his own, our son suffers from Paranoid Schizophrenia further complicated by Asperger’s Syndrome, an Autism Disorder.  As parents, we believed we were doing the right thing by placing him in a private mental facility.  We could not have been more wrong.  He was not safe.

I will admit at the outset I naively thought by surviving two combat tours in Vietnam, I could cope with anything.  Vietnam was a walk in the park compared to this nightmare.

I have three goals with this article.  First, I want people with mentally ill family members to be vigilant of a dangerous pitfall regarding the rules of confidentiality.  Secondly, as Schizophrenia occurs in 1% of the population, roughly 3.5 million Americans, I want to provide the reader with additional insight into this terrible disease.  Finally, I want to educate people in hopes that the judicial system will better deal with the mentally ill.

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I am 32, a United States Marine Corps veteran, an auditor and I am living with bipolar disorder II, which causes symptoms of anxiety and depression episodes.

I never truly understood what it meant to have a mental illness until I realized that I was constantly worrying and feeling down. My depression episodes manifested as days of extreme lows where I struggled to get out of bed and perform day-to-day tasks and activities. I spoke to some friends who were dealing with similar symptoms, and they encouraged me to seek professional help. My bipolar diagnosis was identified when I was in a serious car accident while experiencing a manic episode.

Discovering a mental illness while recovering from a major accident was not easy. Here is what helped me accept my diagnosis and recover from my physical and mental injuries:

• My family and friends stepped up tremendously ready to assist and encourage me. I was an emotional and mental mess, and they helped put me back together.
• I had to position myself to receive advice from my family and friends who are familiar with mental illness and are actively managing their own mental illnesses. I also had to remain open to receiving information regarding coping strategies, being mindful of my mood and warning signs of a potential manic episode or manic depression.
• Setting small goals helped me find my way back to myself. I am not the same person I was before the accident, and trying to get back to that person is not realistic. I had to accept the now me in order to move forward.   

Today, I am different because I am living with my diagnosis and my diagnosis is not controlling me. I see my therapist and psychologist on a regular basis. I am mindful of my mood on a daily basis and aware of the warning signs of manic and depressive episodes. I ultimately have taken charge of my life and my health.

There is a need for mental illness to be recognized as a real and serious condition in community specifically the African American community. People need to be educated on the various mental illness diagnoses and symptoms and see a therapist at least 2-4 times a year to maintain their mental health. Education and therapy ensure they are not putting themselves or others in danger. Many people are unaware of their mental illness and choose to suffer in silence. We need to end this process of thinking and encourage people to seek support.

Mental illness screenings should be done 2-4 times a year for preventative reasons, just like an annual physical examinations and biannual dental cleanings. Mental illness screenings should be no different.

My hope is that people who live with mental illness and the people who love them will eventually see all health as equally important.

Some say that faith and Mental Illness are like oil and water. If you have enough faith, they say, you will never have mental Illness. I have both anxiety and depression. I believe that faith can act as a guide to help you seek treatments and therapy. Let me be clear here. Whether you pray to a higher power or meditate, or do both, pick among a set of behaviors that might set your mind beyond your pain. You are valuable to this world, even when you are just standing still. My meds and therapy are gifts from God. They help me see the world with greater clarity and with less rumination over how this person or other hurt me. I am not scared about doing my job. I have earned degrees and have gone on to teach what I learned. The time is now to give up on stubbornness. How much time have you wasted? My main message is for you to seek help, especially when you exercise your faith. You are stronger than you think.

October is mental health awareness month and anyone who has been touched by mental illness has an important story that needs to be shared. There are people that need to understand that these issues are okay to talk about and feel all the feels.

I feel compelled to share this story about my anxiety and depression because mental illness took the voice of a friend of mine and countless others when it doesn’t have to. It’s a journey, but there is hope.

            “I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. I did not ask for it, nor did a diabetic ask for their illness. Yet, you stigmatize me for mine and call me crazy yet you give compassion for the other.”

That chemical imbalance for me, according to a psychiatrist, is generalized anxiety disorder and depression. Before the diagnosis, let’s go back to December 9, 2016 at around 3:30 in the morning when I was literally catapulted from my bed and my journey began… I jumped up as if someone was stabbing me in the heart. I thought for sure, this is it, I’m dying. Not realizing that I was walking around and pacing in order to decide what I should do next. Needless to say I wasn’t dying… I decided after calling my primary care doctor that I should go to the ER. They pulled me into the room right before the ER pretty quickly after getting there as they often do with unexplained chest pain. They took an EKG of my chest and sent me back to the waiting room. After they took me back to the ER they went through chest x-rays, physical exams, multiple doctors and nurses, and then they said you’re not having a heart attack. We only treat you for what you came in with so we’re sending you home and just follow up with your primary care doctor. What?! That’s it?! Do you people not realize I am actually going to die? Spoiler alert- I’m still here.

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There is a long standing history that the institution of mental health has been unjustly accusing those who do not exhibit mentally-ill behaviors or symptoms their entire life and placed into mental wards to hit their numbers and make that number grow.

I have a read a book called “The Myth of Mental Illness” by Szasz. And while it covers some portion of psychiatry as being valid, it does not address that people without mental illness are placed into mental disorder categories using law enforcement(CIT) or excessive use of force and by fabricated testimonials and not real evidence. They are also a silent generation as they are placed into a system where they feel they cannot speak up without sounding like they are going against an overwhelming power in which they feel they cannot win, as they have been set up to go into the healthcare system without real symptoms and pay up into it.

The silent people who have been unjustly accused and placed into this unfair healthcare system of greed are stigmatized while they need legal representation that would be so brave to fight for them, find it hard to prove with sullied testimonials surrounding them that believe they should be placed there. As those that place them there are also scared or hiding about being targeted instead.

The other side is that, if mental health practitioners do want higher numbers, mental disorder/illness does not become as stigmatized over time due to a higher rise in numbers of those as mentally-ill. As we would like almost everyone to have a prescription and see therapist on a regular basis, that is another topic yet to be vetted openly. But also, never discussed.

Criminally-ill are also very different from the mental illness category, I also have problems with this in the press and with pro-gun stories as they are often looped in with high-functioning mentally ill stable members of society.

Hi, my name is Abi, and I’m a 16 year old from Michigan struggling with depression and anxiety. My experience with mental illness has not been an easy one, nor has it been short. I’ve struggled with my mental health my whole life, as crazy as it may sound. My anxiety has kept me from friends, kept me from reaching out towards new opportunities, it’s even isolated me from my family. It’s thr same way with my depression. People tell me I’m a good writer, but I only started writing to get all the thoughts out of my head in the hopes that would make them go away or at least make them better. (Spoiler alert, it didn’t work.) It irritates me to see people, adults and children alike, going around telling everyone mental illnesses are fake, or people with mental illnesses just want attention. Do not let anybody tell you that, no matter who it is. Your friends, your family, nonody. Your struggle is real, it is valid, and you are an amazingly strong person for fighting through it for this long. There are dozens of people just like you in this world, you are not alone. So please do not be afraid to reach out, ask for help, or simply ask for somebody to listen and try to understand. Thank you.

Long story short, I became familiar with mental illness around the age of 18. I was always aware of it, but never too much in depth until I experienced it myself. My family knew I had major anxiety before I did. I had to go through something traumatic for it to be seen. When I was 19, I was in a relationship with a man 8 years older than me, he turned out to be very abusive. That lead from one thing to another and I was hospitalized twice for self harm and attempt of suicide. After being hospitalized the first time, my doctors put me in Intensive Outpatient Therapy (IOP) for 6 weeks. They diagnosed me with anxiety, severe depression, and bipolar 1 disorder. For about a year I was trying all different kinds of medication and new therapists all while being with the same abusive man. I then was in the hospital again for trying to overdose, that was my final straw for both me and my family/friends. I lost so many important people in my life during this growing period, but that showed me who was in my circle vs. who was not. Fast forward almost 2 years later and I’ve grown so much. I am and have been on Effexor for almost a year, this medicine has saved my life. Not that medicine is for everyone, it is for me plus many other healthy coping skills. I am 21 years old attending university as a Psychology Major, I finally made it to the other side. Dealing with mental illness has taught me so much about self love, self awareness, toxicity, insecurities, and a lot more. If I could share my story with the world, I would, just so everyone knows they are not alone.

Many people suffer through depression every day. It is a very common mental illness. I like to compare it to a swamp of sticky asphalt.  Once you are in, you may never get out unless you are very strong. 

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TO ANYONE WITH ANY MENTAL ILLNESS OF ANY AGE:

(you don’t have to be in middle school)

Middle School’s known to be some of the hardest years of our lives, between hormones and homework it’s tough enough to make it through without mental health and the stigma it so often carries. As it’s impossible to make it through a class without someone making a joke about a mental illness either a friend of mine or I have, I’ve come to a certain conclusion. Teenagers will be teenagers, it shouldn’t be that way, it shouldn’t be an excuse to kidding about things that people truly struggle with on a daily basis, but it is. Sometimes things in life are just stupid, but we can’t let that get to us.

I’m a 13 (almost 14) year old in the ignorant year of 8th grade, towards the end of last year a few things in life went really, really wrong, and it resulted in a series of unfortunate events (no pun intended). Basically, by the time 8th grade started, I had not only experienced my fair share of panic attacks, gone to a therapist several times, but I had also been diagnosed with depression and an anxiety disorder. I had basically hidden from my entire grade during the summer, so as school started up again and I was struck by a mass of indirect insults towards my mental illnesses, let’s just say there was a lot of tears at the beginning of the year.

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And I knew I wasn’t right 

So I planned on going that Friday night 

And I knew I wasn’t okay

Making it the perfect place for me to stay 

See, for most, a mental hospital isn’t a choice 

It’s one of those things where you are left without a voice 

Brought there suddenly against your will

Then before you know it, you are given a bunch of random pills 

But for me, it was where I was supposed to be

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