Mental illness is not a number.
Mental illness is not a statistic.
Mental illness is not a hashtag.
Mental illness is none of these things. People glaze over facts about depression and overdone social media campaigns. Statistics and hashtags don't matter because sufferer's and non-sufferer's alike don't care. People don't care about statistics. People care about people.
Mental illness is the young beautiful girl who my community just lost to suicide. Mental illness is your roommate who struggles to make it through each night. Mental illness is that friend who doesn't go out with you much anymore because she's scared her demons will follow her.
We need to be educated on mental health, but with a different approach. The old way isn't working. In the past, the mental health education I have received was in class in high school and sorority chapter in college. In both cases, someone just read statistics off a powerpoint that was copy and pasted from a website. They gave you a list of resources and called it a day. That doesn't cut it anymore. It's not working.
We can't keep losing people. We can't lose anymore people from my community of Pleasant Valley, Iowa. We can't keep losing our friends from Mizzou. We can't lose anyone anywhere anymore because when we lose people to this- we lose daughters, friends, and a treasured high school cheerleading teammate who literally lifted people up with a smile on her face.
Mental health education is about the people. Instead of numbers, people need to stand up and tell their story. Tell the whole class about how much pain you've been through. Once it gets personal, people listen and connect. That's mental health awareness.
Awareness is not reading facts off of a powerpoint. Awareness is not wearing yellow on World Suicide Awareness Day. Awareness is not tweeting or hashtagging your support. Awareness is people telling people what it's really like to be in a place so scary and dark that it feels like you'll never escape.
Type your story on the notes section of your phone, screenshot it, and send it out on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook for the world to see. Comment on this article and share your story. Tweet me your story. Reply to someone's tweet with your story. Post it on Facebook and let all your mom's friends know that you are not a perfect angel and that you are a real person. Someone will see it and it will change their life because they know they aren't alone. A friend of mine tweeted yesterday something that stuck with me and changed the way I think about all this. What she said was raw and real. She said "You try and figure out why you're sad but there's no particular reason. Everything's dark and it's the scariest thing ever and THAT'S what people need to know." So let's get it going. Let's replace the filler information and generic, empathetic social media posts with real, raw stories. I'll start. Here's mine:
"I started getting my panic attacks when I was 12. These were not anxiety induced attacks. They came out of nowhere and they were so unbearable that whenever one crept up on me I would scream and grab the people next to me and beg them to help me. The attacks didn't discriminate when they would appear. I got attacks in choir, cheering during a football game, during sorority recruitment, and when I was home alone. I suffered in silence because I didn't know what they were or how to describe them to anyone. These panic attacks were different. They were episodes of depression, anxiety, and pure horror all combined. I would feel one coming and my heart started beating and I started shaking. It felt like my soul was being spiraled out of my body and was completely reshaping everything I knew was real. I didn't know who I was or where I was or who the people around me where. I squeezed my eyes shut and asked God to just take me and end this pain, but I thought that even if I did die I would get panic attacks in hell where I was going. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror because I didn't recognize the demon that was taking over my life. For three years I lived in a constant state of worrying when the next one would come. I couldn't live. I couldn't go back to places where I had panic attacks. My grandparents condo in Florida, the place to relax and be happy, is now a place I'm scared of going to because I've had a panic attack there. My sophomore year of high school I had the worst one of my life. I knew then that it was the end, that I was out of body, that it was over. I punched my sister who was laying next to me and I screamed at the top of my lungs "HELP ME." After that, I got help. I got diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety, separation anxiety, panic disorder, and agoraphobia. I have been taking Zolaft, Wellbutruin, and Xanax since I was 15 and I will be taking them for the rest of my life. I haven't had a panic attack as bad as the night with my sister. But I suffer from a chronic, incurable disease. The bouts of depression and panic have come and gone and they will come and go for the remainder of my life. I don't let anyone tell me that "other people have it worse than you" or "just smile and be happy." I guess the most important thing to know is that mental illness isn't about being happy. It's about not letting the sadness win."
Now it's your turn. It's your turn to do something.
