Yes, depression and anxiety are things that are starting to pop up as normalities students deal with as they enter, trudge through and leave college. Stress does create a bubble around each student and affects everyone differently. Psychological studies, doctors, even the media addresses the detrimental effects of mental illness for students.
And yet, there are still people that blame those common illnesses and other internal health issues on the laziness and incompetent behaviors of trying students. How can we accept those troubles to just be “gotten over” by excusing them as nothing more than excuses?
Especially those who work with others as a daily profession, it is extremely important to embrace everyone’s differences and to be able understand the difficulties in their lives.
Depression and anxiety are the more commonly known illnesses and yet each case is so different from another, and there are many more such as bipolar disorder and panic disorder.
So how can one be insensitive to those with struggles in their everyday lives?
Here are just a few of the discriminatory and just plain rude statements and “advice” that have been uttered towards those with mental illnesses:
“You’ll get over it.”
The likely chance of this person trying to get over it, is he/she has most likely already have tried. You are their next result, and you just butchered a bit of their hope.
“Get more involved with things and forget about it.”/“Just focus on school work and you’ll get through it.”/”But you do so well in school.”
Distraction can only work for so long before things start of pile up against one person. And schooling has minimal effects are illnesses unlike visa versa. The best chance they will get is with a professional or someone who knows how to talk to someone who simply has no one who they can express themselves to.
“It’s just a stage.”
In many cases can depression, or other, be a stage. In no way does that mean it is any less important than someone who is embedded in it for a lifetime. A mental illness is exactly that. It’s something that will affect, a person regardless if it’s for one day to one lifetime.
“Other people have it worst.”
Everyone has a responsibility to their own feelings and sometimes they feel a certain way. You could have a bad hair day, cry over it and still be justified. It’s just how the person acts after that. If your loved one is feeling a type of way in any sense, there’s a good chance that it means a lot to them. They trust you with this information and you don’t want to drive them away with a sentence that may not mean much to you, but means the world to them. Do not make their feelings or problems feel insignificant, because they’re not.
“But you act so happy all the time.”
Just no.
“Calm down, you’re being dramatic.”
They trust you and you’re going to respond like this? Realities to others may be unfamiliar to you, but they are not unjustified. Their so called “dramatized” disorder/illness is part of who they are, you should not make their problems less important than they are, or even how you view it.
“Stop being weak and get over it.”
Actually, the sole act of going to you and expressing a problem as sensitive as this is the strongest thing a person can do. You are weak to be knowingly ignorant about the subject.
“Just think happier.”
“Just stop being so sad.”
“You’re just emotional.”
“You just don’t want to get better.”
“Just…*ANYTHING*.”
I’m grouping their statements together for the sole reason of they are just ignorant to how mental illnesses work and demean the altogether importance of a person. Emotions have a different type of way to handle situations and themselves just because of chemicals in the brain, cognitive thought and all the other important psychological words and definitions. In all, what I am saying is, you cannot just think these illnesses away, and for a person who does not know as much in the subject, it is just very difficult to give advice. To give accurate advice is a struggle of it on it’s own because there are so many cases and forms of any mental illness. And especially when those with more than one come to you with advice, the best thing you can do is encourage going to those who are trained to handle these types of situations, thinking about how you phrase certain questions or just everyday statements when it comes to the “problem”, and making sure they know you are going to be with them whenever they need it.
Because the problem isn’t the illness, it’s the way us as a society as well as individuals treat those struggles.
