

RIP CHESTER BENNINGTON.
i remember linkin park as one of the first bands i listened to as a child. chester’s voice was a big part of my life.
every time something like this happens or almost happens it breaks my heart because so many people in our (nigerian) culture are against/ignorant of the fact that people actually struggle with mental illness and being suicidal. i recently heard someone sit and ask why a friend didn’t go through with his plan to commit suicide. my friend had decided that suicide the way and was going to go through with it. (thankfully he’s still alive today.) so this person said that if he really wanted to kill himself back then, he would have done it. she made it sound like he was only crying for attention and there’s no such thing as mental illness/disorder. devastatingly, this is a common misconception. it really needs to change. our government doesn’t put the right resources in for mental health even though it is a part of healthcare. health is a person’s physical, mental, social, etc. wellbeing. our friends and family need to be healthy – in all ways. we need to acknowledge the ailments we may not see physically and hold them with the same importance as the ones we do see. mental illness is not a white man’s problem, nor is it demonic possession, but a real issue caused by chemical imbalances, which can cause any number of physical illnesses too.
don’t judge, encourage.
i also want to add this: don’t treat mental illnesses/disorders like they’re grunge aesthetics or something. don’t make it a trend. stop romanticising and certainly stop making fun of it. it’s not something that happens only in the movies (the things portrayed in them are even sometimes misconstrued ideas); people struggle through it everyday, and in different ways. have some compassion.
in a nutshell, we need to make mental healthcare a mainstream. we need to learn more about and endeavour to understand mental health.
