Mental illness is difficult to deal with, because it effects everything you do, and everyone around you. It is also hard to diagnose because it messes with your brain, and hard to treat because the part of you that is sick is the one that you have to use to treat yourself. I have dealt with mental illness for some time, and was diagnosed over a year ago. My experience has been all over the place when it comes to people and their responses to my illnesses. These are just a few people I have run into, and what my responses to them are.
1. The Prayer Warriors
I love these people. They will pray about everything, which is great because we need to take everything to God in prayer; but some of these people think that prayer will fix everything. I'm not saying that God doesn't have the power to heal mental illness just from prayer, he absolutely does, but that's not the only thing that can be done in these situations, mental illnesses need to be treated like physical illnesses.
2. The Sympathizers
These people are super nice, they try to sympathize with you and try to help you to the best of their abilities, but they just don't get it. You love them to death, but sometimes they can be a bit overbearing.
3. The Finger Pointers
These people don't make sense to me. They think that people with mental illnesses have done something wrong, or have sinned and are now being punished for their sins. These people are like Job's friends, they looked at him and pointed out all he must have done wrong in his life to be punished by God in they way he was, but it was not his fault. God was testing him. In this same way, it is not the person's fault that they have this illness.
4. The Stigma Spreaders
These people are the ones that treat people with mental illnesses like they have a deadly communicable disease. They won't have anything to do with people with Mental illnesses and are basically scared of mental illnesses.
5. The Hiders
These are either people that don't like talking about mental illnesses or are scared of talking about mental illnesses, either because they are scared, or they just don't know how to deal with it.
6. The Advocates
These are people who speak out about mental illnesses and try to crush the stigma, these people are awesome! Jared Padaleki is honestly my favorite advocate he is so down to earth and real with his Always Keep Fighting campaign.
8. The Supporters
I wish everyone could be like these people. They are the ones who will support people with mental illness and just be there for them. There is no judgement, just love and care. This is what more people need to be like!
