Support

Hey, MisWired here. And today I want to talk about support. With the increase of students who are committing suicide, it got me thinking, how much do we actually support people with mental issues? Hundreds of articles and shows have been done on HIV/AIDS, cancer, and to a lesser extent depression, and there are many NGOs and organizations set up to deal with the same. More families are willing to make sure that the plights of people with cancer, HIV/AIDS are understood, but can we say the same for mental health? How many people actually write articles and make shows about mental disorders? How many NGOs and organizations are there to tackle mental health issues? How many families are willing to talk about mental health issues? Very few, right? What makes mental health such a difficult topic to bring up? Why can’t someone say “I’m struggling because I have ADHD/Autism/LD”? Why is it, that as a society, we make a mental issue a sign of weakness? Why do we want to punish people for something that is beyond their control? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hold them accountable. I have ADHD and Bipolar I, and my friends still hold me accountable for things I do. But at the same time, they don’t forget that I still have my own set of struggles. My ADHD and Bipolar don’t define me, but at the end of the day, they’re still part of me. They’re not something that I can “switch off” when I feel like. It’s not something that everyone “has” or people do. Just the same way we don’t make fun of people with physical disabilities, or force them to do something that they aren’t able to do, why do we insist on forcing people with mental health challenges? If someone with depression can’t get out of bed, why insist that they do? If someone with ADHD can’t focus, why punish them for it? This is the kind of support I’m talking about. Support doesn’t just mean buying them medicine when they need it, or checking up on them once in a while. It means being their voice when they can’t speak. It means making people understand that what they’re going through isn’t just a behavioral issue. It means being their advocates. It means reading about their conditions so that you fully understand what they are going through. That’s what supporting people with mental health challenges means. It’s about going above and beyond what is necessary to help. And right now, I feel like there are very few people who are actually willing to truly support someone with a mental health challenge. And that’s a shame, because the one thing we need is support.