Mental Health: What I’ve learned

Mental health wasn’t important to me at all until I become mentally sick and yet through it all, I survived the stigma. I won and the stigma lost.

When your a child:

As a kid, you don’t know anything about mental health nor know that it exists until your in your teens with depression and most likely anxiety problems not knowing any of the knowledge of mental health issues. How to cope, manage and help yourself to recovery before you get any worse. Until it’s too late, which is part of why so many teens go through these two common illnesses and some don’t make it out alive in the end. Because of the lack of knowledge from their middle school teachers not teaching them about how important mental health really is: just as important as our physical health.

Mental health:

I have learned a lot ever since I had a problem. Definitely not when I was experiencing a few symptoms without noticing. But after I finally had come to realize while learning about mental health in health class in my 2nd semester of grade 12, I realized for who knows how long that I had a problem and wasn’t ‘aware’ of; realising that had a mental problem myself: depression. For the thought that I knew nothing about mental health. Except for the fact that I knew about Robin Williams suicide, struggles with his depression and what little I knew about Demi Lovato’s mental health struggles.

After going through few depressive episodes and finally working on my recovery, I realized how truly powerful and deadly the ‘stigma’ can be. On top of that note, I learned a lot about both from my experiences with my depression and anxiety but also throughout my recovery stages. It’s more truer than you may be lead to believe this quote below:

But from this and everything in between the lines of mental illnesses, I have gained a lot from my experiences with them. So I had a thought to become a counsellor to help those who suffer from mental illnesses. Knowing what it feels like from experiencing it myself, I believe that I can give them helpful advice when they find it hard to see light in their darkest days with their illness. Because I’ve been there myself and knowing how hard it is from the stigma, I will be more able to assist them to the recovery stage sooner than never. Better safe than sorry.

Result Thought

I want to make people who suffer with mental health issues to feel like they can come to me for support when they feel most comfortable talking about their mental struggles. Because knowing that you have people like that and friends who understand/support them through these types of situations, it makes it less unbearable and pushes you towards recovery and far away as possible from dangerous situations that could put them or others in life-threatening scenes.

Research

I have been doing my own research on mental illnesses and mental health overall as May is ‘Mental Health Awareness Month’. And I found many great articles and facts about the important topic. But there was one that brought my attention and interest in learning about: companies taking mental health seriously!

Recovery

Recovering from any mental illness is so hard yet not as hard as fighting the stigma before starting your recovery. But no matter how worse anyone has it, seeing them in recovery, is more inspiring than it may appear to be. And after all that I have experienced with it, I love how I came up with one of the best ideas yet to turn my experiences into a career. I never knew that going through mental illness like depression and anxiety would lead me to my passion for helping others out of the darkness that mental illness may appear to be. But I’m glad I suffered from them because it gave me the thought only leading to my own career in something no one would ever think of anyone pursing even after experiencing mental health issues themselves. But like Cloud 9 quoted:

“Nothing Is Impossible”

In conclusion, I believe that being a counsellor would be a great career for me being through a mental illness myself!