What are your images of people with mental illness?

What are your images of people with mental illness? Are these based on real people you know, images in the media, or other sources? Do you think all people with mental illness have things in common, or do they all have different traits and stories? How do you think we can change the stigma of mental illness?

 

I totally agree with the campaing 'Depression has no face'. There is no typical mental illness photo or character. Mentally ill people mostly has a job, a family and live their normal life while struggling with their inner feelings.

Many situation can cause mental illness and maybe their stories are similar sometimes. As everyone is different, everyone struggling with mental illness is different, too.

 

Hi, I agree with some of what your both saying. I have a mental illness. I have been in the media four or five times. I campaign so that FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) is recognized. I feel like people are starting to understand. Lot's of people with Mental Illness's have different stories.

My Story is different then anybody else I know. Everyone's story is deferent, just like there are no two snowflakes alike there are no two people alike either. I want people to know that all people with a Mental Illness have feelings. I agree that everyone is different.

I disagree that there should be a thread here talking about mental illness, but since there is and I can't really do anything about it, I want people to know that someone with a mental illness can live a perfectly normal life. I can meet someone somewhere and they don't even know I have a mental illness. They could live with me for four years and still never know that I have a mental illness. I hope this information was helpful.

 

These days everyone is depressed or bipolar. I guess it is common in my generation, maybe it is just more acceptable to talk about mental illness these days and there is no stigma attached to it like before.

I do believe people suffer because they don't know how to live their life. We are all living the fast life setting high goals that we might not achieve.

People that seek spirituality have a lot less mental issues, for example: when ever I listen to a priest talk he had something calming about him and I have never heard of a priest or a rabbi committing suicide.

 

"Never Judge A Book By Its Cover"

After working in mental health for some time and learning more about patients that I ever thought I would know, I realized one thing, everything I thought about mental illness and people with them was incorrect.

We watch so much television and get so many thoughts on our minds about what is truly real that we lose perspective of the real picture. We forget that no matter if we are having a mental issue or not we are all people. People with feelings and whether we focus on the good, the bad the ugly, we all find a center that helps us to cope. In short, "people with mental illness are no different than you or me."

My thoughts used to be, "if you have a mental illness, you must be truly crazy," but the truth is, "anyone can have a moment or be set off by something," does that make us all crazy?

Another thought was, "I can tell someone with mental illness by the way they look," truth is, "those people look just like you and me."

The most common thought was, "If they went crazy someone must have driven them there," yet the majority of people with problems mentally inherited these issues. "Most mental illnesses are what some would call a "generational curse," something that is passed down from one generation to the next. Something that at a specific point in time is revealed. Some people were broken, but who hasn't been broken at some point in time? For others as hormones change and thoughts are reorganized some people find themselves faced with problems they cannot control.

So in summary every vision I had of someone with a mental illness turned out to be just another myth.

 

This is judgemental, and offensive.
Not everyone "is depressed or bipolar" & those aren't the only types of mental illness, but people are now more open about sharing their experiences of mental illness.
Depression caused by a chemical imbalance is not the result of not knowing how to live your lives., and having a strong spiritual faith doesn't stop you from experiencing poor mental health. Sometimes people having strong religious or spiritual beliefs and feelings is the result of their mental illness - religious mania can be a symptom of bipolar or schizophrenia for example.

Priests or Rabbis are possibly less likely to commit suicide because of the fear of punishment in the afterlife,
or if they do the church/synagogue organisations aren't likely to publicise it for religious reasons.
Just because we haven't heard of it doesn't mean it's never happened.

Even the most calm, caring or spiritual people and/or those living the most perfect seeming lives, can still experience symptoms of mental illness.
I know someone who is a total believer in positive thinking, and is always really positive and smiley but still experiences severe anxiety stopping her from using supermarkets and public transport.

 

First, I believe people with mental health conditions are just ordinary people struggling with common problems such as cold, malaria or Hepatitis. And most of these people are affected differently and have personal stories, though people with similar conditions such as bipolar or schizophrenia do have some common symptoms. That said, I look forward to the day the world will view mental problems like any other illness.

 

Well, I believe that people with mental illness are just like anyone else. They are just people like us who strive for living their day to day life. Mental Illness or health has no face. We can't draw a picture or create a photo to define or describe the image of people with mental illness. The sad truth is most of the times we can never be sure of who among the people we know or meet is suffering from it.

We may have a friend or relative who appears to be cheerful and yet is struggling inside. They may seem okay, moving forward every day. But deep within they may be battling with anxiety. Who would have thought that the cute, bubbly girl in a photo is suffering from severe depression? Mental Illness is not something that could be easily identified by seeing the person. It is something deep that really needs thorough attention. Unfortunately, with the fast pace environment and judging society that we have now most of us may experience mental health issues at one point in our life.

Aside from the fact that it is not easily recognizable, it also varies per individual. So generalizing it for the sake of putting an image to it is not right and it is not even credible. Being indifferent to anyone suffering to any type of mental health issues is also not acceptable. We should remember we all go through paces. And these paces maybe of the same or maybe at different extent. We all have the same sense of emotion for we are created equal. The way we deal with these emotions and handle the paces may be extreme or more than ordinary. But at the end of the day, we are all of the same species called human beings.

 

I have a daughter who works in a government mental ward where the patient care is free of charge and we often talk about her patients and their relatives. Whenever I ask of her, what has brought their sickness, she says that there are a lot of unknown factors. Most often, there are emotional traumas in their life that they weren't able to cope with. Some also seem to be hereditary.

Secondly, mental illness is a broad illness. You cannot simply say that someone with a mental illness is crazy and this has been the stigma for many years. Good thing, with the spread of awareness throughout the years, this stigma is little by little being eliminated. Thanks to the courageous patients who have brought us to light how we should deal with them and that at one time or another, we could have been victims of this kind of sickness also.

 

I quite agree that mental illness is mostly hereditary.
The bad experience/trauma only serve to activate something that has been dormant from birth.

I believe that the bad experience/trauma is not the sole cause of mental illness.
It's in the genes, bad experiences/trauma only bring it out.

Now, I don't know how a person can suppress something inherited.
I've heard cases of families where every single child is mentally ill.
We shouldn't stigmatize people living with the illness.