I have spent the last month contacting people who may or may not wish to contribute to cathartic.co. This has involved spending a lot of time interacting on forums and forming relationships with people who are suffering with mental health issues, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder and many many other terrible life affecting conditions.
I feel like Alice, I have fallen down into a rabbit hole of issues that no one knows exists and no one talks about. I am in a wonderland filled with despair and desperation that goes seemingly unnoticed by the vast majority of people. Or perhaps this wonderland is actually modern life and everyone is struggling with mental health problems but as it is not deemed socially acceptable to discuss these issues, people are anonymously taking to the internet in search of an answer.
The sheer volume of people struggling with mental health issues is shocking. Shocking. It genuinely is astounding that there are so many people out there who feel they are worthless, panicked, depressed and of no value to society.
Endless posts on forums from people desperate for help, desperate for anyone to offer them even a kind word. As a society, I think we should be appalled at the fact that so many amongst us are struggling with life on a day to day basis and there only real means of support or recognition of their problems are strangers on the internet. People feel that they cannot turn to those around them as there is no understanding, compassion or empathy and that they are an embarrassing burden.
One major forum about depression has upwards of thirty to forty new posts an hour, sometimes even more. I’d objectively say that at least half of these are people posting that they want to end their lives. I appreciate that you cannot take anything on the internet on face value but if even only 10% of these cases are valid then that is a shocking statistic that urgently needs addressing.
These are examples of the type of posts being made, all within a few minutes of each other by different people:
“I’m worthless, I hate myself, I wish I was dead”
“I thought I was getting better — now I don’t want to exist”
“I want to kill myself tonight”
“Do you ever simply, not want to live?”
Mental health issues are nothing to be ashamed of, anyone can be affected by them at any time so I cannot comprehend why it is deemed unworthy of support, sympathy and compassion.
For those that say others should just pull themselves together, I believe that empathy is key to all this. Any person amongst us could be subjected to something traumatising at any point and not know where to turn. Stigmatising those who are struggling is detrimental to all of us. Individuals who cannot see that this could happen to anyone, at any point are a hideous reflection of us as a society.
There are many people out there doing exceptionally good work in this area and this can only get better but unless awareness is made of how staggeringly large this problem appears to be, the people who vitally need support will not receive it. They will be left thinking that they are alone in this, when we should all be doing the best we can to support each other and not deride someone because they have been dealing with hard things that have overwhelmed them or have a medical condition that they struggle to control.
Our website, cathartic.co exists because we identified a need for people to express their thoughts, feelings or story in a place of complete anonymity. We are providing support for people through a platform they are comfortable using. The rapid growth we are seeing is demonstrative of the fact that there are so many people struggling with day to day life, who have nowhere else to turn. If there was no need for our website I’d be perfectly happy because it would mean mental health was being addressed in the correct way and society was a better place to exist in. Until that day we will continue to provide support to people who have nowhere else to turn, in the hope that one day society will have improved and they won’t have to turn to us.
