Mental Health

(Melting Away by Brigitte Johnston)

A couple of weeks ago, I shared an article about a woman requesting a sick day from her job due to her having to deal with some form of mental illness. The head of the company informed the worker that she was proud of the employee to being responsible for taking the day for her mental health. Overall, this was a good article and showed that people are starting to become more aware of mental health. When I shared this article on Facebook, a gentleman disagreed with the article and claimed that that as an employer, if someone requested a sick day related to their mental health that he would place them on vacation time until he found their replacement for the job. This thread on my post continued further into how employees are seen as just machines that when they don't work, the get replaced. This is not fundamentally appropriate to say someone with a physical illness is fired, yet to the person on my post believed that due to someone not being mentally stable, they should not be working for the company. As I discussed my opinion with this person, he expressed that the main purpose an employee is to benefit the employer, and that if someone has to take a day off before a project is due, this could cost the company, but when I prompted the thought of taking a sick day after the project was due, he expressed that he did not want to have someone in his company that could not handle mental stress. When viewing this situation from a business stand point, he's right. Companies are not human, they are a business. They don't have feelings, empathy, or human reasoning. The sole purpose of a company is to make profit, that is the fundamentals of capitalism. I don't want to speak negatively about this gentleman because I'm not mad at him for giving his perspective and he for sure read many counter arguments to his on the thread. I feel like him and many others are just not educated when discussing mental health and mental illness. Let me make this clear that being uneducated in this field does not mean someone is stupid or ignorant. I didn't fully comprehend mental health until I was in my major classes for psychology and it still took time for me to understand everything behind mental health. People don't talk about mental health due to the fear of being accused of weakness, sensitive, or crazy as the gentleman in the post proved to still be a reality. This is known as a stigma. 

Depression

What do you think when I say mental health? Do you think someone is crazy? Do you think they need to see a therapist? Do you believe that they should be looked down upon? That they need someone to talk to? Mental health, to me, can be compared to physical sickness. I know comparing them is like apples and oranges, but hear me out. Lets say that I am outside in the rain or cold and due to me being in that weather, I actually catch the common cold. If I treat my cold such as resting, drinking orange juice, and eating hot soup, I can feel better and be on my way, but if I do not treat my common cold, my sickness can worsen. Now lets say I just lost a friend, a bad break up, parents are getting divorced, and I feel a heavy sadness. Perhaps this sadness is known as depression. If I treat this depression such as talking to someone, applying coping skills, focusing on the positives in my life, I can be better and move forward, but if I don't treat my depression, it can be worse which could lead to major depression and suicide. Both a common cold and depression will come to all of us in someway, shape, or form. We don't plan or want these sicknesses, but they happen and there should be nothing wrong with telling someone that you have depression and you would tell someone you have a cold. A common cold can also be contagious and get others sick, but can the same be said about depression? Can being around someone who suffers from depression be contagious to others in the work place? Food for thought. 

Anxiety

Next I wanted to talk about stress and anxiety. I can't blame someone who has anxiety or feel some form of stress. Look at our schools, businesses, social gatherings, media. We strive for perfection which is not such a bad thing. I am a firm believer in wanting to improve on yourself everyday, but what happens if you can't meet the bar you or maybe someone else set for you? I think we can all agree that failure is unforgiving in our community. Let's go back to the gentleman that claimed that the purpose of a employee is to make the employer and the company money. If a machine fails, it is either fixed or replaced, and in some companies, this can be said the same for the employees. Typing that less sentence stressed me out and I can see the perspective why failure is seen more as a termination from the company rather than a time for learning and bettering one's self in the company. I understand some failures can be detrimental  like a pilot or doctor, but with the majority of careers, failure can help us learn from our mistakes. With testing, career fields, colleges, internships, money, bills, we cannot stop for a second to breathe without the fear of messing up that this leads to stress and anxiety. We are so consumed by what others think of us that we can start start to have heavy anxiety. With that being said, I think it is important to care what other people think of you so you can always improve, but to let others thoughts break you down that you have such heavy stress is not healthy. I believe there should be balance. I don't blame people for being anxious. In this time and age who wouldn't be? Just as depression if anxiety is treated appropriately, it can make us a better person, but if not treated, anxiety can crush us.

Anger

Anger is not a mental illness, it is one of the six basic feelings that everyone feels, but how we treat our anger is where we can bend the line of mental health. Anger, or a more severe version hatred and rage can affect someone's behaviors and personality. Rage can cause use to say or do something we would not do in a normal state of mind. I know I have said something out of anger that has really hurt someone's feelings, and when I calmed down, I regretted my actions. When someone says/does something out of rage their main goal is to hurt someone and is usually because the person performing the action is highly upset/angry. Even though this makes sense this does not mean that this is appropriate. People need to identify an outlet to maintain their rage so they do not regret their actions in the future. With rage being explosive and spontaneous, you then have the slow more methodical known as hatred. I personally has had a hatred for someone in my past. I constantly talked about this person in a negative manner and until someone pointed it, I was thinking about this person in a negative light that it was affecting my everyday life, relationships, and my education at the time. Hatred is not the opposite of love, but just the opposite feeling. You want good to come to someone you love, yet you want bad to come to someone you hate. You are still thinking about that person, that person is still affecting your life, and you are still dependent to that person.

Addiction

Addiction has the biggest stigma to mental health with the phrase I always hear, "they brought this on themselves". True, but addiction is more complicated than that in my opinion. Gambling addiction is starting to come more into lime light with online gambling such as draft kings with fantasy football and counter strike lottos with video game items. People who spend all their money on gambling is more than someone trying to get rich. There is a thrill and mindset behind gambling and the possibility of success. Pornography addiction is so common now that you can access so much pornographic material at our finger tips online. Pornography can lead to the standard of what women have to be for the viewer needs to be sexually attracted to them. If the viewer's partner does not meet the standard as the person in the pornography, he or she may not be sexually attracted to their significant other. Alcoholism and drug addiction are looked down upon just because the blame is to the person. I feel that drug and alcohol addiction is usually brought upon by the first three mental illnesses that I discussed in this blog post. People drink and engage in drugs to escape reality, to have fun, and/or to numb some hardship. This can be said to any addiction, that someone is unhappy with the state of mind that they are in and need to venture to some form of coping. We all have a escapism rather that be video games, books, internet, and sports but when any of these began to affect everyday life, this is known as an addiction. 

Schizophrenia

My mentor and professor once told me that if depression is like a cold than schizophrenia is like cancer. There are a lot of mental disorders in between the four I talked about earlier and this one, but I feel like this should be a conversation. Schizophrenia is an umbrella term which is slowly becoming smaller and smaller the more we learn in the field of psychology. To me, schizophrenia is horrifying. People who suffer from this can suffer from extreme paranoia, visual and audio hallucination, catatonic state, and other mental issues that can constantly leave these people in a constant nightmare. I feel that I cannot even grasp what goes on in the mind of someone who is schizophrenic. In the past, people who suffered from this disordered were caged and suffered with inhuman medical treatment such as shock therapy, placing them in icy water, taking parts of their brain out (before anesthesia), injecting with animal blood, and performing lobotomies. With people who suffer from schizophrenia, the objective is not to "cure" them, but to treat them and place them in a peaceful state of mind. 

Courage

One of the influential people that got me into psychology told me that therapy is not for crazy people, but for courageous people. I don't understand why there is such an insult and stigma with seeking help with mental issues. I believe that if you are willing to admit that you have an issue and that you want to be treated that puts you ahead of the curb with getting better. I know that saying you are going to therapy may label you as a crazy person, but we all could use therapy in some part of our life. Does that mean we are all crazy? No one should look down on you because you went to the doctor for a physical sickness so why be judged for going to a therapist for mental sickness? As I said earlier that companies are not human, but they are ran by human beings just like you and me. If someone wants to use their sick days for mental illness I don't see the harm in that. If someone needs time to get themselves together so they can be more productive at their career than laying them off is only going to hurt the company when you need to find their replacement and retrain the new person. Firing someone over mental illness is only hurting both parties and could easily be avoided if people just took the time they need to resolve whatever issue they have in their lives. Telling someone to "get over it" or "deal with it" does not resolve any mental health issue even though I have said that in the past. With playing devils advocate, I can admit that a lot of people will also use mental illness as a crutch, which is only an issue with me if they do not seek any help what so ever. We all can agree that not taking responsibility for depression and/or  anxiety, but then leaning on them due to inappropriate behavior  is not acceptable. I believe that we should be more empathetic to mental illness and have a better understanding, but to also encourage and promote that they seek professional treatment for whatever they may be experiencing.

I have only scratched the surface on the topic, but I would like for this conversation to continue. My word isn't gospel, but just my perspective on the mental health. I respect anyone's opinion no matter if you agree or disagree with my opinion. Let me also make it clear that I am not an expert on mental health and my opinion may change depending on what I learn about mental health. I would love the take this conversation further if you wish to comment on here, Facebook, email, or direct message. I want this to be a topic of discussions with others as well so be sure to share with your friends. As always thank you for reading, I hope this post helps in someway.