“Whether an illness affects your heart, your leg, or your brain, it’s still an illness, and there should be no distinction.” –Michelle Obama
Why is it that when you see someone lurking on the street, laughing by themselves, you scoff, you show disgust? Yet when you see a person struggling from cancer, you sympathize, you empathize? Why does schizophrenia seem worse than leukemia? When all they are is an illness of the body? The brain is part of the body, the breasts, and the legs. Why is mental or psychological related illness or chemical imbalance so shamed, characterized as more disgraceful than the physical ones? Doesn’t it make sense to see them treated the same way?
People who suffer from social anxiety or depression struggle just as people who suffer from cancer. Yet they are degraded and shunned for having these illnesses.
You don’t feel embarrassed to see a doctor when you get a broken leg or get something stuck inside your body, why should you when you have emotional issues?
I’ve read an article by Soong Phoon from The Manila Times saying that the only explanation she can think of is that mental illness manifests itself behaviorally, rather than physically, which can be more difficult for those observing and on the receiving end of this behavior to process. Though, like what she stressed out, some diseases also show behavioral afflictions but people who have them aren’t stigmatized much than the ones who have been clinically diagnosed with depression.
“Telling someone with depression to cheer up is like telling a cancer patient to cure themselves,” a quote from KatieKnows.
Observably, with Filipinos’ well-known happy-go-lucky attitude, I think this is just usually seen as ludicrous or just as a pessimistic way of thinking that can be shaken off. Some people even think a “snap out of it” or “get over it” can resolve anything. In fact, it doesn’t resolve anything. At all.
Now, I’m not implying that physical or other illnesses are worse than the mental ones. I’m implying that all illnesses, be it on the brain or your heart or kidney should be addressed, approached and treated equally so that people who have them don’t have to be afraid to seek for professional help; so that the fear of people distancing themselves away from them because of their past records would be soothed; so that people who have recovered from mental illness don’t have to carry discriminating or degrading labels in their lifetime.
Did you know that it’s just a myth that people who have psychosis are likely to be “violent”? That’s according to The British Psychological Society.
Actually, the ones who do the stigmatizing and discriminating towards these illnesses and people who have them tend to carry some “madness” in them that they usually accuse mentally disabled people to have.
Countries, not only Philippines should give some more spotlight surrounding mental illnesses and educate all people about them. That could stop some stigmatizers from destructing other people who already have something that virtually destruct them.
Mental illness is a real thing that should be treated and focused on. They affect people’s lives and even some of these people’s families’ lifestyles. That’s enough for us to be comfortable talking and spreading awareness about it. So that stigma that causes discrimination and humiliation towards people who have and had them has the chance to finally disappear.
