Which is the scarier word? Depression or cancer.

Both can be life-ending. But both do not carry the same opinion.

Why is cancer our first reaction? The number of suicide deaths in the U.S. are almost equal to the number of deaths caused by breast cancer.

Tell me why we recoil in shame when we hear of a young girl suffering from bipolar disorder, but offer hugs and consolation to someone diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Because you see it is not just depression compared to cancer. It is every mental illness that is treated as less than physical illness. It is schizophrenia, ADHD, OCD, alcoholism, and all the rest. But why?

Mental illness still has a stigma.

We would like to think we are an incredibly progressive society, specifically in the medical field. Learning so much, we can do a thousand things no one could have dreamed of fifty years ago within the simple realm of the brain. ADHD, which was once considered “being an airhead” can now be treated with real central nervous stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin.

Wow. Look how far we have come.

For those of you who did not catch my sardonic tone, the fact that many ignore the simple existence of the stigma leads to the fact that we are still severely stunted in our thinking. We are ashamed and uncomfortable with mental illness because unlike broken bones or pneumonia it does not shout sickness. It might be even more dangerous than that.

It whispers it.

As May, the designated mental health month, draws to a close, I implore us to ask why the stigma is still there. Is it just society’s nature?

Because I can attest to the stigma. I confess to all the times I hid my illness from the people I knew. How I used the word “psychiatrist” instead of “therapist” for the longest time even when I was really just seeing the latter that week.

At that time, society and this damn stigma made me, a fifteen-year-old girl, feel ashamed for being ill.

As if fifteen-year-olds do not have enough to stress over.

And the biggest contributor to the stigma is our obsession with being happy 24/7. I will not claim to be an Aristotelian philosopher, but I do know one thing.

Life is a shitshow and our emotions should correspond with that show.

We do not need to be okay and smiling all the time. We need to feel things and cry and scream and laugh. And if our brain chemicals are a little messed up, then we will deal with it like we deal with a broken bone. Diagnose, treat, reevaluate. Because being mentally ill or sick or whatever label you put on it does not make you less of a person. You are still human.

Ignoring the stigma does not end the stigma. It just marginalizes a large percentage of the population, making it difficult for those suffering to ask for help.

I suffer from depression and severe anxiety. It is not something to be avoided. It is just a fact.

I have chondromalacia in both knees. It also cannot be avoided. It is also just a fact.

So, I appeal to you, the people who have brought us solar energy, Netflix, the “I almost dropped my croissant” vine, and all the rest…

Let’s shatter the stigma.