Mental Illnesses And Mental Health

Knowing someone with a mental disorder as scary as depression is extremely heartbreaking, especially when it 's someone you sincerely care about. One of my closest best friends suffers from depression and it’s the worst feeling ever to know they are miserable on the inside with nothing you can do about it. Mental disorders are very serious and should never be joked about, as it could potentially affect someone who has a mental health problem and make it even harder for them to prove they need help. I know for a fact that I have definitely misused statements like "that’s retarded" and "their crazy" when referring to incidents that aren 't related to mental disorders. After thinking about the effects my language could 've had on someone, I realized we have to change our language and stop shaming mental illnesses. I believe that our society needs to stop trivializing mental illnesses, to understand how our words and actions trivialize mental health disorders, and to change our language when describing something negatively.
There 's a direct relationship between language and mental illnesses that many people fail to see. Often times throughout the day we hear someone mention a mental illness term and think nothing of it, but when someone who has a legitimate mental disorder is trying to come out and seek help, they 're seen as looking for attention or are simply using it the same way anybody else would. So many people use mental illnesses to describe a situation with little realization that they 're denouncing the true disease portion of an illness, making it seem less severe than it actually is. As explain in "How Language Impacts the Stigma Against Mental Health", many people misuse terms like suicide, especially when emphasizing ...

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... talking about the disease retardation. Some believe that we shouldn 't have to worry about what we say because in this day in age, everyone gets offended by everything and people are sometimes "over-sensitive" to the way things are phrased nowadays.
Agreeing and disagreeing sides of Pugsley 's writing both need to understand that it 's a courtesy to others to "watch how we phrase things" and to respect them. By putting a stop to trivialization, we can help respect others, especially ones that suffer from a mental disorder or are close to someone who suffers a disorder. We should be more careful with the use of our language to avoid stigmatizing those with mental health issues. No disease should ever be something to joke about and if we change the way we talk about different situations, we can move forward into getting rid of the stigma behind mental health issues.