Halloween has never been one of my favorite holidays. And I never really had a reason until now. It seems that Halloween has always been a way for people to stigmatize mental illness.

Since I follow a lot of anti-bullying and mental health awareness accounts on social media, a story about Wal-Mart's new "Razor Blade Suicide Scar" makeup popped up on my timeline. Being me, I got offended and angry. So, I further researched this craze on mental illness costumes.

It turns out that there are quite a few costumes related around mental illness. Here are just a few:

My question is: why would someone wear something like this? You would never see someone dressed up as a cancer patient because that would offend a whole population. So, why is it different for mental illnesses? This just furthers the stigma.

All of this made me realize that Halloween has been an excuse for years to put this sort of label on mental illness. Pennhurst State School and Hospital was a real institution for mentally and physically disabled individuals and was shut down in 1987, but is now used as a haunted attraction called "Pennhurst Asylum". Scenes in the walk-through include people in straight jackets, actors being strangled down in chairs, and other things that have something to do with "the insane". This doesn't sit well with me because it's like these people are making a joke out of mental illness. The dramatization of all of this could be why people are so afraid to seek help and could have something to do with why people don't take mental illness as seriously as physical illness. There are so many more "insane asylum" attractions across the country.

Another society depiction of mental illness is the recent release of Suicide Squad. It's titled this because the members of the squad have a mission that could possibly result in killing themselves because of how dangerous it is. Struggling with anxiety and suicidal thoughts for years, the title of the movie honestly scared me when it came out. The word "suicide" makes my heart drop into my stomach every time I hear it so I naturally never had an interest in seeing the movie. It didn't seem real to me how excited people were to see a movie with that word in the title, but I couldn't escape from it. I heard that movie title for the majority of my summer, not really seeing how affected I was by it until now. Personally, I have never seen the movie, so I can't say whether or not the movie actually mocks people with suicidal thoughts and other mental illnesses. But I can say that even the title is a little off putting for someone like me.

The list goes on and on for how society and the media put a huge label on mental illness. The reality is: if you haven't dealt with mental illness firsthand or you haven't studied psychology, the only thing a person can go off from for knowledge about mental disorders is society. Society cannot act like mental illness is just some big joke and can be played around with in costumes, movies, and social media. It needs to stop.