Haejin Park for Buzzfeed
Written by Farah El Bahrawy
II write this article inspired by a state I am in and by struggles my loved ones are going through.
Imagine walking around a city where everyone is speaking in a foreign language. They all look different, each one scarier than the one before, yet they seem to be going on with their lives just fine. There are sounds of screaming and crying. The streets are crowded, loud, and ugly. The cars won’t stop for you at crossroads, even if their traffic light is red. Your senses feel too heightened. You look right around you and see your family and friends are behind you but you feel that you have never felt more alone.
This is what it’s like living with a mental illness in a society that will not acknowledge or support you through it.
Mental illnesses have always had negative stigmas attached to them. Declaring an ill person attention-seeking, bluffing, or crazy are some of the most common ones. In a world where mental illnesses are at a peak, the progress in noticing and acknowledging them is seriously lagging.
Mental disorders develop out of many reasons related to genetics and environmental factors. They come in many forms, such as anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. The new generation highly suffers from them as well with the rise of social media.
Despite the many forms of mental illnesses and many sufferers, society does an excellent job at neglecting them. Regardless of the fact that many people suffer from them, a mentally ill person can barely feel like they relate to others because their experience is so personal and because they are so often shunned for complaining about something others around them do not see or understand. The suffer then worsens and the results are almost never pleasant.
For example, when a student breaks their leg they can be excused from taking an exam, but if another has an anxiety attack they need to “get over it’. The student with the broken leg is fully capable of doing the exam, but since his or her cast is visible, they can be excused. But the other is mentally not capable of doing the exam, yet they will still be forced to. The first student will ace the exam later, but the first is most likely to perform poorly. The whole situation is so illogical, but it happens so often.
Even though a lot of schools and universities nowadays usually provide a counsellor, their still policies never seem to be accustomed to mentally ill pupils, which is also illogical.
Institutions in today’s world, such as educational, industrial or familial ones, need to start supporting and truly understanding people with mental disorders as they are a vital part just as anyone else to create a fully functional and leading society.
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