MAKING IT ALL BETTER | OCTOBER 2017

MAKING IT ALL BETTER

You quite often hear and see the headlines of mental health issues, this week the headline was '300,000 laid off because of mental health issues each year'. But you never really hear the solution or the success story of mental health, quite simply because you never can escape the fear of mental health creeping back in. You fear that you are going to spiral back to the place where you used to be. Your emotions will be your enemy, they will erupt and takeover when it all gets too much. Whether you're a introvert or an extrovert; the overwhelming days can push you too far. Why do we live in an age where work and money is valued more than the welfare of our own species. The awareness of mental health has got a lot better, but there's still a stigma in terms of mental health being a weakness; even though a lot of people have begun to speak about their issues, it's still seen as a weakness. The anonymity of mental health brings ignorance from others; you don't know what people are going through whether their suffering with depression, anxiety etc. Just because a person comes across as happy and smiling all the time, doesn't mean when they are on their own or when they get home they cry themselves to sleep or thinks suicidal thoughts. What I'm trying to address is that yes, mental health awareness is getting better, but I think they'll always be a stigma around it because you can't physically see it, and from seeing comments online, people who are talking about their mental health can be accused of attention seeking and wanting more subscribers on their mental health. There is probably people that do that yes, which comes back to the point of the spiral of money over health once again. 
The stigma hasn't been broken yet, and maybe won't fully be broken. From the experiences I've seen and listened to, I've only really listened to mental health in women. I think the stigma of mental health in men and young boys has an increasingly bigger wall built up around it; regarding masculinity and what it means to be a man in this day and age makes mental health much harder to talk about. 
Being a teenager in this generation has a lot of pressure added on to it. The age of social media taking over our lives I think has a correlation with mental health. Young girls see certain women looking a certain way with no diversity in their appearances, therefore it makes young girls think they should look and dress a certain way. No. As long as you stay healthy and you are happy with the way you look, it doesn't matter. Dress the way you want to, if you feel good those girls on Instagram that are looking all the same doesn't matter. Mental health is real issue, it is a killer, as much as physical illnesses. Funding is being reduced, but that doesn't mean the community of people suffering can't come together to support each other. 

Rose X