Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

Mental Health Awareness Month is coming to an end, so let’s talk about Stigma.

Merriam-Webster defines Stigma as “a mark of shame or discredit.” Now let’s see what the definition of Shame is: “a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety.”

Those are pretty heavy definitions, if you ask me. But they describe the experience of so many of us who live with mental illness and/or addiction.

LIFE IS NOT FAIR

Mental illnesses are, in fact, illnesses, as is addiction. They all have their basis in biology. There are certain ways to combat this, such as with medication, therapy, social support, spiritual practice, TMS, ECT (you know how I feel about that), and a few other methods.

But until you get to the point where you (a) realize what’s going on, and (b) become willing to get help for it, you’re left to your own devices to figure it out. And that’s not easy.

You know how they say that no one blames you if you have a heart attack or a broken leg? They just want you to take it easy and take care of yourself so you can heal. Well, the same *should* be for mental health and addiction issues. Our lives are just as meaningful and impactful as anyone else’s, even though we may not always feel that way. But for many of us, these are lifelong battles. And for some of us, they are fatal.

Yes, that’s right, fatal. Addiction can kill you: The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) says that overdose deaths have increased from 16,849 in 1999 to over 70,000 just two years ago. (That chart does NOT include alcohol-related deaths.) And dealing with a mental illness can be so disheartening and make you so desperate that you decide to take your own life. In fact, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 90% of people who die by suicide have a mental illness.

This is why we must continue to fight the stigma and misinformation surrounding mental illnesses and addiction. With the negative connotations and ignorance out there, it can make it difficult to deal and even harder to get into treatment.

Maybe your family shames you for being “different.” Maybe such things just aren’t talked about in your experience. Maybe you’ve told someone about your concerns for your mental health or drinking/using and were shot down.

All of these experiences make it that much harder to get to the place where you’re ready for treatment. I’ve said it before – Shame sucks! For me, it has been one of the hardest thought patterns to break (I’m still working on it). Why do people Shame us? Here are some possible reasons:

• They don’t understand.
• It scares them because they don’t know what to do about it. Many people want to try to “fix” us.
• It scares them because maybe it makes them look at their own behaviors.
• Maybe they’ve had a negative experience of their own while trying to talk to someone about it.

These reasons and others undoubtedly play a role in how many people react to us when we try to talk to them about our emotions, feeling unstable, alcohol and other drug use, erratic behavior, etc. But the big one is this:

STIGMA.

Stigma colors the way people see us and our conditions. Certainly, a lot of progress has been made over the last 30 years or so, but for the most part, mental illness and addiction are still relatively taboo topics, in some communities more than in others.

I don’t know about other people, but that makes me feel like I’m broken or damaged, like I’m some “problem” that needs to be “fixed”. It makes me feel like I can’t talk about it, I can’t be honest about what’s really going on with me. You know what that means? It means less people seek out treatment.

After all, who wants to be an alcoholic or a drug addict? I’ve never met anyone who told their childhood selves, “I want to be an alcoholic when I grow up.” Or schizophrenia. Who wants to feel out of control or be out of touch with reality in that way?

The thing is, these are treatable conditions. We don’t have to fall through the cracks. But stigma keeps people from sharing such important, intimate information with their partners or their doctors or anyone. Indeed, only about 60% of the 44 million+ people who are diagnosed with a mental illness receive any treatment in a given year.

If other people would stop being ignorant, afraid of what they do not know, and judging, more people would seek treatment and be able to get better.

The onus is on each one of us to make sure people know that mental illness is not only common, but that all of us know someone (or several someones) who has a mental illness, diagnosed or not.

DELIBERATE IGNORANCE

As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of ignorance. The first one is when you simply don’t know something. Perhaps you’ve never encountered it before or grew up in a community where the topic wasn’t a big deal. In other words, these are the things you don’t know you don’t know.

Then there’s what I call “deliberate ignorance”. This is where you know about the subject, but you choose to not learn about it, not talk about it, and not hear others when they talk about it. These are the things you DO know you don’t know.

This is the most dangerous and damaging kind of ignorance, which leads to stigma as well as a host of other social ills.

People who choose to not learn about, talk about, or listen to people about mental illness and addiction are a big part of the problem. It is these people who tend to repeat misinformation, myths, and judgments. If they only knew their favorite cousin Mary has bipolar disorder, maybe they would feel differently.

It’s not that they do it maliciously, necessarily. My opinion is that people, in general, are afraid of what they do not know.

When I lived in California, I often took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, like an el train) into San Francisco. One day, I walked to the station and up to the platform. Of course, I had to wait a little while for the next train. No big deal.

There were a few people milling about, waiting for their trains. I really wanted to sit down, and the bench I had my eye on was occupied by a younger man who was animatedly talking to himself. (My assumption, given what I know about mental illness, is that he was schizophrenic. But I could have been wrong; maybe he was just jonesing.)

Most people just walked by him and paid no attention (or pretended not to pay attention). But none of them sat down next to him. My guess is that most of them thought he was “crazy” or “weird” or “different”, and they find that scary. I did not. I knew he likely had a mental health diagnosis, and there was nothing about his behavior that I found scary.

I sat on the bench with him. He just continued to talk to himself. I don’t even know if he noticed I was there. When my train came, I got up and went into the city.

No harm, no foul.

Consider what you know about mental illness. If you saw this guy on a bench, would you sit with him? Or would you be afraid of him because he was acting “weird”?

Now consider what the general public knows about mental illness. What do you think most people must be thinking? This is what I imagine they think: “Damn, that guy’s weird. He might be dangerous. I’d better keep walking.”

This kind of fear, which is created by ignorance, myths, misinformation, unfair judgments, and Stigma, can create an environment that is hostile to people with mental illness and addiction issues.

That’s not fair.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO FIGHT STIGMA?

Educate yourself on mental illnesses and their prevalence. Educate others, too. Your family, your close friends, your coworkers, your doctor, whomever you want. The more people who know that one of their loved ones struggles with a mental illness, the more people will try to understand and be compassionate, rather than blocking it out and running away from it.

It’s important for people to know that folks with mental illnesses and addiction problems are not likely to be dangerous. In fact, we are 10x more likely to be victims of violence.

Once they figure out that “normal, everyday people” can be afflicted with mental illness and/or addiction issues, they will realize it’s nothing to be afraid of. Who knows? They may even try to be helpful.

Talk about it. Please, please, talk about it. You don’t have to hide. Knowledge is power, right?

Stay strong and Keep it Real, kids!