It's taboo to talk about in society but mental illnesses are a huge part that affect a large portion of the American population. Nearly one in five American adults deal with a form of mental illness, a statistic provided by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And college campuses are not immune to this epidemic. Depression and anxiety plague many college students, either being induced by stress or simply a part of a lifelong battle with clinical disorders. Being mentally ill in college can be utterly exhausting and can oftentimes affect major parts of your life-- academics, personal life, and social relationships.
One of the best ways to avoid letting your mental health overrun your life is to have a strong support system. However, it's difficult to feel supported if your friends don't necessarily understand what it's like for you living with depression or anxiety. It's not truly their fault and you can't expect them all to know immediately to help you. But a good friend should be open to learning how they can best support you when you're not mentally at your best.
The experience between mental illnesses vary wildly but for now, we're going to talk about the experiences of students battling mild to severe depression or anxiety, and how friends of these mentally ill students can help.
Things mentally ill people want their friends to understand:
1. We're depressed or prone to feeling depressed.We're prone to feeling anxious, and sometimes we feel incredibly sad.
2. Some of us are ruled by emotion, so we will take certain comments personally. Even if you don't intend for it to be offensive or about us, our brains like to make us believe that certain behaviors are possibly subtle slights against us.
3. We are more receptive to other people's emotions, which is why we might go out of our way to make sure you are not upset with us.
If we say thank you or sorry far too often, just know it's our way to let you know that we care how you are feeling or if we are causing you any inconvenience.
4. We will feel like we are inconveniencing you by asking for your support or friendship. Please reassure us that we aren't being as such, or we will continue to worry that we're bothering you.
5. Compliments, praise, or the offering of help goes a long way.
Hearing kind words from the heart from the people we love can help us feel worthwhile and defeat any low self-esteem we might be battling.
6. It's the little things that count.
Sometimes what we really need is for someone to ask, "how are you?", "are you alright?", or "do you need to talk?" Sure, it won't completely cure us or make whatever is upsetting us go away, but at least some of the pain will be alleviated knowing our friends are willing to be there, regardless.
7. Please don't be upset if our response to "how are you" is "I don't know."
Sometimes, we truly don't know what's wrong or why we feel down. But not knowing what's actually wrong shouldn't revoke our right to feeling what we feel. Our emotions are valid, even if we don't even know what's wrong.
8. If we express a desire to stay in or that we don't feel well to go out, please respect that.
Sometimes the idea of leaving our bed and seeing other people in a social context is too overwhelming and may even affect how we feel physically. We're not trying to be flaky or trying to rain on everyone's parade by rejecting your invitations to go out. Sometimes, social activity is too much to take and we need time to recuperate.
9. Sometimes little things make us feel terrible.
Even if the situation we're upset about is comparably rather small, please do not devalue our feelings. It's often a part of a greater scheme of frustrations that make forgetting our homework or choosing a film no one enjoyed for movie night elicit such powerful waves of emotions.
10. We don't expect you to jump into our heads and understand everything about our realities. But please be open-minded when we share details about how we feel to you. You might not understand it yourselves but to us, it's a part of our day-to-day experience.
11. If we tell you about our disorders, please keep them between us.
Don't bring them up in front of others in normal conversation. We shared you that information in confidence and will oftentimes want to discuss how we feel with you, but there's a time and place for talking about it. In front of strangers or other friends who don't know yet is not the time.
12. Please don't assume that we're merely trying to gain attention when we have an episode or are just being too lazy to get out of bed.
Mental illnesses are just what they sound like -- a form of illness. You wouldn't shame someone who is sick by belittling their symptoms or pain. Why treat depression any different?
13. Episodes are different for different people, and can even vary within the same person.
How our mental illness affects us can differ from the situation, the people involved, the type of day we've had, or what mood we woke up in that morning. As we must adapt to our own emotions, please be receptive to our needs at the time.
14. Sometimes, we're just going to be upset no matter what you say.
We don't blame you, we aren't devaluing your advice. We appreciate you but sometimes, we just have to ride the emotions out. Sometimes, we feel alone even when we're in a crowd.
15. Just because we seemed happy or fine today does not mean that we're cured or that we were faking it before. Just like other people can have good or bad days, we are able to have good days but still be prone to feeling depressed.
16. We will love you and be so incredibly loyal to you for the effort you put into making us feel better.
It may seem inconvenient that you have to go through such lengths to be our support system or you might honestly not understand what we're going through but please, we will appreciate any small action you do and will always make sure that you know how appreciated you are. Because a good friend stands by the people they love, mentally ill or not.
