Fighting the Stigma Begins From Within
I have a new mission in life and that is to fight against the stigma that plagues every one of us unique, special, loving, caring, supportive, struggling, talented, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, friends and individuals with a mental illness. As I get older I have come to realize that there is no place in the world for discrimination of any kind.
In December I am graduating with my Bachelor in Marketing, and as soon as I get the go ahead, I am applying to the Chicago School of Professional Psychology to get my MA in Mental Health Counseling. I have this overwhelming need to help others as others have helped me, whether it be a social worker at a partial hospitalization program that I attended multiple times or my therapist to whom I see weekly. They all have had such profound effects on the person that I have become and the person that I will be.
People are scared of what they don’t understand and that is where the stigma lies. By educating and advocating, one can have an impact on the stigma and ill-conceived preconception of what people think mental illness is. I know that is a watered down version, but we need to understand that it is going to be hard, hard in ways that we may not understand at this time. Educating the un-stigmatized of their ignorance’s opens the door to change their view of mental illness and answer any myths and misconceptions that they may have.
I feel that to truly start to tear down this stigma, we first need to look within ourselves and realize that we hold this stigma as fact. We need to fight the stigma within ourselves first before unleashing it out on the public. We have feared this stigma so much that it has paralyzed us from living and speaking the truth about our illness. People with a broken arm never try to hide their cast; they will actually ask you to sign it. I am not saying that we should tattoo “I have bipolar disorder” our forehead, but when the topic comes up or someone is speaking ill of someone who is “crazy” or “acting bipolar”, just simply ask them if they know what bipolar or crazy is, and if not, educate them. I understand that each one of us will go through this de-stigmatation process in our own time; some will never, but the more that unite the louder our voice will be.
