My mother is a very practical woman. Since the day I was born she’s taught me that when something’s broken, you don’t complain, you don’t freak out, you don’t throw a pity party, you fix it.

For some reason, the world has become a place where there’s severe hesitation to seek help to fix mental health. If you have a broken arm, you go to the doctor, get a cast, and it’s fixed, however if you struggle with any form of mental health there’s a huge pressure to figure it out on your own. If you do choose to seek help, whether it’s medication or therapy, there’s a huge pressure to keep it a secret.

From preschool until the middle of first grade I was selectively mute. If I was anywhere other than the confines of my own home I would not speak. It wasn’t a developmental problem, it wasn’t that I had the inability to, in fact when I was safely in my house with my family I spoke just as, if not more, profoundly than any other kid my age. My mom didn’t waste any time. She immediately took me to a cognitive behavioral therapist, where they diagnosed me with anxiety. I was too young to articulate what the cause was, whether someone had made fun of my voice and that’s where the fear stemmed from, or whether I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. Looking back, I think I was just an overly cautious anxious kid who realized quickly that the best way to never say anything wrong, stupid, or offensive was to just say nothing at all. The doctors gave me some medicine, met with me weekly to talk about it, and now at twenty years old my biggest problem is that I won’t ever shut up.

My problem didn’t just magically completely disappear. Throughout the years my anxiety has manifested in different ways, and during difficult times or major life changes I have to look out for bouts of anxiety and depression. I still take a low-grade medication, and I occasionally go to a therapist to talk. I’ve become very comfortable and unashamed of my struggles with anxiety, yet because of the stigma of mental health I can feel my blood pressure rising at just the thought of this article becoming public (and it’s not just because I get easily anxious).

We would never think of blaming someone for getting cancer. We would never blame someone for needing his or her appendix removed or contracting some sort of infection. We would never scoff at them and say, “just get over it.” So why has “just getting over it” become an acceptable solution to offer to people suffering from mental health disorders?

Whether it’s obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, or any of the hundreds of other disorders, they can all be attributed to a biological cause. Often caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, mental health disorders are never caused because the person suffering from them woke up one day and decided it would be a fun battle to have to go through, a fun use of their free time.

That’s not to say that those with these disorders are helpless victims. Seeking help and toughing out the recovery is something that won’t happen without extreme will power and effort. There were countless weeks freshman year, during one of my bouts of depression, when laying in bed for days and doing absolutely nothing (not even “Netflix and chill”) sounded so much better, and so much easier, than getting up, “faking it till I made it” and going to the doctor to determine a solution.

One in four adults, that’s 61.5 million Americans, suffer from some form of mental illness. Of the entire youth population (13-18 years old), 20% suffer from a mental health disorder. If nearly a quarter of the entire population struggles with these disorders, why are so many of us so afraid to talk about it?

I was lucky that my mom was the kind of woman to immediately get me help and fix the issue, but there are countless of people too scared to ask for help because of the stigma that goes with it. There’s no shame in needing professional help, sometimes “faking it until you make it” only works for so long before it becomes too exhausting to function.

The world would become a much better place if we all became a little more comfortable talking about these kinds of issues. I have anxiety. Sometimes I go through spells of depression, sometimes I have panic attacks. I take medicine for it, and sometimes I go to a doctor for it, but as of now I’m not afraid to admit it.