Thoughts on Mental Illness

Many of my closest friends struggle with mental illness. And when I say many, I mean practically all. It makes me wonder if I attract a certain kind of person, or if we are just close enough that they feel comfortable sharing their vulnerabilities with me that many others also share. In other words, do most people struggle with their mental health, and I only know about the struggles of my closest friends, or is mental illness relatively uncommon and I happen to know many people who suffer from it?

Is mental illness something one can get over? Is the feeling of anxiety an inherent trait, or the result of an unhealthy environment? Does depression go away?

I am tired of surrounding myself with people who are mentally ill, but this problem is much bigger than me. Lately, it has become less faux pas to talk about these sorts of things, but there is still an underlying stigma. We feel embarassed and weak to discuss our difficulties, as if they would just go away if we were strong enough to fix them. But of course, it is a lot harder than it sounds.

I feel mentally drained everytime I have a conversation with someone about depression. I feel hopeless. I care too much about my friends, and that is my problem. I drop everything for those I care about. I go through hour long conversations about anxiety – sometimes my own and sometimes of others’ – and leave feeling like I left a part of myself behind.

We talk again and again as if conversation about it is a solution in and of itself. I think conversation can help for a period of time, but we must do more.

Our environment plays a major role in how we feel. The amount of exercise we get in a day, sunlight, the people we surround ourselves with, the amount of stress we take on, as well as a multitude of other factors. Many of these, we don’t really have much control over. High stress is perpetuated by our fast paced society that values efficiency and profit over wellbeing and human connections. How can we exercise when our cities and suburbs have been built for cars and not human beings? How can spend our time NOT sitting at a desk when our classrooms are structured around lectures and our jobs are in cubicles? How can we experience nature when the only trees we see are atifically planted in these linear formations next to our sidewalks?

Mental illness is larger than the individual. Self care is important, but it is not all we need to do. We need to restructure our societies so they promote our mental wellbeing. We need to create from scratch a system that fosters our health, but I am not so sure this can or will be done in the near future.