Stigma? What stigma?

The 18-year-old founder and CEO of Project LETS searches to find the answer behind the ever-present stigma surrounding mental illness. 

It’s 2013. Soon to be 2014. We have airplanes, Segway’s, our first African American President, cures for smallpox, the Braille Glove, hybrid cars, bacon flavored gum balls, several TV shows devoted just to pregnant teenagers, a man has been on the moon.. and yet, if a person confesses they have a mental illness of some sort, it is more than likely they will be met with something to the effect of: “Just get busy and distract yourself” or “do you want to get better?” or “there are people in Africa that have it way worse than you. Suck it up.” It’s easy to ignore the problem and pretend it doesn’t exist. Pretend that those people are suffering because of something they did, and not because they were born with a condition that affects even the most basic of decisions. And it’s easy to think it’s just them that’s affected. That we don’t need to treat them, and that is wrong. As a person with mental illness, I will try my best to explain what is like to deal with something that you can’t see. With mental illness, it is like your vision has been tarnished by an illness that causes your brain to malfunction. Your eyes work perfectly, but what you see is completely different from a person who isn’t suffering. Because unlike you. there are certain chemicals acting in my brain to make it interpret the world as a different place. And when you tell somebody with a mental illness not to worry, or to cheer up, or stop stressing, all you do is make them feel worse about not having the biochemistry to be able to do so.

Another interesting thing is that we are still questioning whether or not mental illnesses exist. Yes. Yes. It exits. Mental illness is not an invention of pharmacies, or Freud or Jung. It is not an artist to trick people into paying money for unnecessary cures. It is not an invention of Hollywood. It is not simply thinking contrary to social norms/traditions/customs/protocols. It is not a quirk. It is not having excess emotion. It is not being someone who expresses themselves freely in a rigid society. It is not acting out to gain attention. Mental illnesses are confirmed patterns of symptoms appearing in people who come from a wide range of circumstances, backgrounds, economic statuses, and geographical locations. People ask me why we need mental health awareness. We need it because people are still questioning if mental illnesses really exist. I grew up with the mentality that taking psychotropic drugs was the cowardly, weaker way out. That I should be able to take on everything myself, keep it locked inside and deal with it, like my parents did — but ignoring it never made sense to me. I would watch as my parents would pack themselves down further and further until it would inevitably explode and damage the fabric of our family. I could see and feel the backlash, and as a result, my method of dealing has always been to articulate what I’m feeling in a way that my parents were never capable of teaching me. Because I could so clearly see the downside to the alternative. To them, “I feel to much” — I’m too over sensitive, too over-thinky. Whatever I’m feeling probably isn’t as bad as I make it out to be. And you know, it took a stern diagnosis and talk from my doctor to get me to even consider medication, and even when I did start to take it, I felt like I had failed. Until I started to feel better. People ask me why we need mental health awareness. When you disclose mental illness, you become an instant failure of a human being. You are cast aside as lazy, foolish, faking, and crazy. It is seen as something you willfully do to yourself, a shameful and supposedly selfish state of being that is undeserving of help, love, or care taking. It is an odd paradox that a society, which can now speak openly and unabashedly about topics that were once unspeakable, still remains largely silent when it comes to mental illness. This month, for example, NFL players are rumbling onto the field in pink cleats and sweatbands to raise awareness about breast cancer. On December 1st, World AIDS Day will engage political and health care leaders from every part of the globe. Illnesses that were once discussed only in hushed tones are now part of healthy conversation and activism. Yet when it comes to bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress, schizophrenia or depression, an uncharacteristic coyness takes over. We often say nothing. And so we marginalize the people who most need our acceptance.

It’s funny how we humans go through things and often feel like we’re the only ones on planet Earth who’ve experienced them. We look at others and think they have it all together, they have no insecurities; they’re destined for success in all areas of life without the slightest bit of effort. But that’s not really the case—not at all. No, we’re all human. We all struggle with different things, are insecure about this or that, or have experiences that simply change our lives and make us feel alone or insufficient. When we have the courage to share our stories, to tell others about what we’ve experienced, what we struggle with, and what we’ve learned, we change lives. We heal ourselves when we share our stories, and we heal others too. Those who are on the outside might think this organization is about me being noble, or something to that effect. But honestly, it was different than that. Yes, I absolutely wanted to help those who were struggling—but I also knew I couldn’t do anything more than comfort them. Reassure them. Tell them they matter. I’m not a counselor, and LETS isn’t a counseling center. We are only a bridge on the road of recovery, a first step—and it’s up to the person how far they go. So the questions remains, if I knew coming in that I could only do so much, why did I want to do anything at all? Well, My answer was always the same: “I want to help people.”

Regarding LETS, I wanted to be brave enough to let people see the real me: all of me, the good and the bad. Even after years of depression and anxiety, staying up all night completing habits and rituals, and feelings of hopelessness, even in spite of all the bad things that have happened, I realized there is life still worth living. A life that can be full, and happy, and overflowing with love. And maybe, in this life, I could help others realize the same. Not everyone will run away. Not everyone will look the other way when bad things happen. There are people who will love you no matter what. I’m still coming to trust this myself—it’s incredibly hard to let others in, especially when you’ve lived a life of intentionally being alone for so long. But let me tell you, it’s worth it. It’s worth taking the risk, because it is so freeing to be able to have someone you can talk to about anything and know they will never be scared off. Someone once told me that walls are safe, good, human; that if you don’t want to burden anyone with your problems, keep them inside. We keep silent because we are afraid of what others might see and if they’ll run the other way. But LETS talks about the importance of community and having a support system. And in all honestly, I know this best first hand. When I was 17 years old, I was sexually assaulted. Besides dealing with my mental illness for years, this assault bulldozed my life. It’s not something I can very easily explain to someone who hasn’t been in that position, but it degrades you. It makes you feel unworthy and cheap and wrong. And I thought the best way to go about it was to keep it to myself. Walls are good, safe, and human, right? Wrong. To this day, I am still opening up about my assault, but having the support system that I do is incredible. For me, no one has turned away. But in an odd way, this event made me very resentful. Nobody could understand my years of being distraught over OCD, but suddenly, when something physical and tangible happens, I am allowed to be depressed. I am allowed to lay in bed for 2 months because I was assaulted. Now, treatment makes sense?

My assault led me into my third round of treatment, but when I first went into treatment for my OCD, everything was “fix” this “fix that” change this. That is not what I needed to hear at 14 years old. More reasons why I wasn’t good enough. More things wrong with me, more things I needed to be ashamed of. But it didn’t stop there. The next time I went into treatment for OCD, my therapist said, “You want to be a surgeon? With OCD? Hmmm, I don’t know about that.” Or when discussing college she would say, “Don’t you want to be fixed by the time you go to school.” Every time I heard these words, I felt broken. I felt wrong. It has taken me years of thought and questioning to come to the conclusion that I don’t need to be fixed. None of us need to be fixed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with us. People like to imagine this normal, perfect person. Everyone tries to match up to that person, but they don’t exist. Why is my OCD wrong? Why am I less of a person because I suffer from this? I have accepted the fact that OCD is a major part of who I am. I don’t believe it’s something that’s happening to me, and I’m okay with that. I don’t need to be fixed, because I am not broken. Of course, these mental illnesses can come to wreck havoc on our lives and relationships, but then control therapy comes into play. I need to control this disorder, and not let it control me. I need some coping mechanisms to deal with the stress. When I needed glasses, I don’t remember the doctor saying I was broken and needed to be repaired. I was simply given a pair of glasses to help me cope with the problem in front of me. These issues can interfere in our lives, but it doesn’t make us less human or less worthy.

I have dealt with so many teenagers who self-harm, and the same is true for all of them. When they are forced to go to therapy and get lectured by an adult who tells them what they’re doing wrong, they don’t feel anything. They won’t stop self-harming until they want to, nobody can make them. I have found the most success in honest conversation. In simply saying, “Hey, you self-harm. Why don’t we talk about it?” The conversations where I tell teenagers how they can live without self-harming, and how to be kind to their bodies is so much more effective than sitting in an office being told “to stop cutting.” I believe these issues are more than forcing a child to go to therapy. Honest conversation and the realization that we are not broken is so much more valuable than anyone can even realize.

So, what exactly is LETS. LET’S is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating youth about mental illness and suicide prevention. And why did I start this, or why do I care? When I was 14, a friend of mine committed suicide. We weren’t best friends, or even close, but we had played sports together and gone to concerts together — we had more mutual friends. What really impacted me about her death was the impact on the community, and those left behind. There were tons of 14-year-old girls who were left not knowing how to grieve, because nobody wanted to talk about it. The school wouldn’t get these kids help, they wouldn’t memorialize her, and they wouldn’t even speak her name. I saw the impact on a family and a community — but mostly, I saw how people can come together in the aftermath of a tragedy. People just want someone to look at them and acknowledge them, maybe smile and say, “You are not alone.” How do we do this? Through words. Through language. LETS has started an incredible amount of campaigns and resources for a community in need of a family. We have established curricular programs, parent education conferences, support groups, a 24 hour crisis line run completely through smart phones and computers, peer leader programs, Club LETS, school protocol, inpatient treatment programs, college chapters, and my personal favorite, the Let’s Be Kind Initiative. I started having self-harmers mail a letter and their self-harm tools to my house. As a self-harmer, I know that no parent, no therapist, and no friend will stop this addiction. Through this letter writing and freeing of the tools, it is the person taking a step in their life, and making a decision. We have received over 500 submissions, and we receive more every day. Each letter is responded to with a personal letter from me, and sometimes we even keep in continuous contact. I have had the privilege of speaking with addicts who were a few months or a few decades into their recovery, mothers and fathers desperate to find help for their child, teenagers with bright smiles and fading scars, men and women who were still reeling from their parents’ failures, victims of the kind of bullying and abuse that nobody deserves, individuals who had miraculously managed to survive themselves. And somehow, I was the one with the privilege of speaking to them, and I could look at them and say, “I am so glad you are here. I am so glad you are alive. I am so glad you are getting better. I am so glad to have met you.”

If we began to more freely share our stories of struggle, defeat, victory, and overcoming, things would be so different. Consider how much more we would relate to one another, how much less isolated and alone we would feel going through our own experiences, and how much more purpose we would realize we have in offering our stories, which are completely unique—and yet, entirely relatable. It is in these moments with these people — when I can speak to an entire audience who understands me, that I realize the most valuable lesson of all. Regardless of circumstance, past experience, culture, race — everyone has the power to relate to one another. It’s the foundation of humanity, and these conversations are the common threads of our hearts, which we uncover when we feel another’s pain or joy. An impression is forever left in our lives, and each person finds courage to walk on and act as a messenger, carrying the other’s stories in our hearts. This foundation fosters understanding and enables hope. No matter how small the conversation, community is created and thrives within the smallest of exchanges. Our similarities are greater than our differences. We each have a story to tell. Each is unique, valuable, and carries the power to completely change the lives of people we love. Share yours. There are no lost causes when it comes to suicide prevention. People need to be encouraged. People need to be reminded of how wonderful they are. People need to be believed in—told that they are brave and smart and capable of accomplishing all the dreams they dream and more. Remind each other of this.