What are your first thoughts when you come in contact with or thing about someone who has a mental illness? How about someone who has type two diabetes? How about someone with congestive heart failure? How about someone with a broken leg?
Oh they brought it upon themselves.
It isn't that bad to have _________ (insert disease, disorder, or debilitation here).
I am sure I caught you in your tracks, cause I mean who doesn't think that the alcoholic or druggie has had the choice, in turn bringing it upon themselves; or that the individual affected by schizophrenia can actually control it; or the person with type two diabetes is just addicted to eating food and caused it themselves; or the one with congestive heart failure shouldn't have been smoking for all those years; or a broken bone isn't that bad, I mean, after all, it is only temporary.
Well, you are completely and altogether wrong.
Is my logic flawed? Am I just as crazy as those people diagnosed with a mental illness? maybe. I mean, after all, I am actually enjoying the stresses and challenges of nursing school.
But hear me out.
Addictions all begin with a series of decisions; all life is is a series of decisions, right? There are both good and bad decisions, and some peole fall victim to those bad decisions more often than the good; there can be so many factors involved with why the individual chooses to indulge in the bad rather than the good. Each person has a story, and you never really know it until you ask them, until you talk to them, until you show them you care. The thing is, everyone makes bad decisions . . . we are all human.
How would you feel if you were defined by all the bad decisions you have ever made; what if you 'bad' was attached to your forehead, in a similar way to those with formalized addictions, such as alcoholism or drug addictions. What if your bad decisions held you captive and wouldn't let you go, what if you became a slave to your sins, your addictions.
Have you ever met someone with schizophrenia? someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder?
Why does mental illness have a negative stigma attached to the diagnosis?
Maybe it is because people don't understand it; after all, the human brain is so complex that my brain starts spinning when I read the nervous system anatomy chapters of my books. Are we afraid of mental illness?
One thing I know for sure is many people are not well educated about mental illness and are physically and mentally unable to thoroughly understand what it is like to be affected with such a disease because of the simple fact that they have never experienced it.
Maybe an example would help:
I was able to go a little over two decades of life without breaking a bone. There were many people as I was growing up who broke their arm, their fingers, their leg, and who knows what else. In elementary school when someone came in with a cast around their forearm resting in a sling, it didn't seem like a 'big deal.' In fact, I figured that coping with a broken bone was an easy task; what's an arm in a cast and sling for a few weeks anyways?
It never occurred to me how truly debilitating a broken extremity can be, that is until I personally experienced myself. In addition, if you were to ask my parents or my sister about the process and challenges of living with a temporarily broken extremity, their thoughts would be extremely similar to mine since they were the ones walking through it with me; walking through the challenges, the tears, the showers, the doctor appointments, the long nights, the everything with me.
Without this personal experience, I would still be thinking the same thing about broken bones: They aren't a big deal.
See, anyone who hasn't experienced something either first hand or even as a parent or sibling, in my opinion, is unable to relate. When a friend's parents would go through a divorce, I was never able to say, "Oh I know how you feel," because I didn't know how they feel; as a friend all I could do is listen to them and be there for them. As a nurse, I cannot tell my patients that I know how they feel and everything will be alright; I may understand what is going on, for instance, int he case of addiction or schizophrenia, but I cannot relate to their situation because I have never walked through it.
That is why is it so important to keep an open mind to different ways of viewing things. As a nurse, one of the most important aspects of psychiatric care is first self-reflection of possible biases.
Putting yourself in someone's shoes does not make understanding their struggles easier, because what if you don't understand it completely?
Those affected by mental illness are still humans and sometimes it can get hard to maintain those thoughts.
Take a little time out of your week this week and watch this movie if you have yet to see it; it may just open your eyes a little wider to the world around you that is suffering and the opportunity for you to help someone: A Beautiful Mind.
