Quoting nymphomanic from 21:15, 14th Jun 2006
Just wondering what people's attitdes are, do you take mental illness as seriously as you would take ones which manifested themselves moe physically. I personally believe that both are as valid, although having a father with manic depression it seems to be that fewer people take i seriously. Why is this?
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I read most of the night and go south in winter - wasteland
Never having had any direct experience of mental illness it wasn't something that I really thought about. However now that I was diagnosed with depression and an associated condition and had to take some time off work for that very reason recently I know exactly how it affects people.
It's all very well admitting to it but especially in someone like myself actually going to seek help about it is and was extremely hard. There is huge stigma about mental illness in our society, as it is a 'hidden' illness that people can't see. It's not like cancer or something when you say you're ill and that's almost tangible; you can appear to be acting perfectly normally when inside you've got all this stuff going round - you don't actually look ill.
The words "mental health problem" sound really quite ominous, the sort of thing that gets knowing expressions on people's faces. It is a fairly sobering thought that until fairly recently people with a wide range of mental health problems were confined to psychiatric wards, sometimes for the rest of their life.
Happily I think people are beginning to wake up to the issue because there is more coverage in the press about it and people are generally more educated about the issue. But there is still a long way to go and until people learn that especially with depression telling someone to "cheer up" is not the way to make them feel any better, people will not take it seriously.