Mental health warriors

We are ending mental health awareness month and it seems appropriate to give recognition to the people who make this all happen and at the same time, make all worth it: mental health warriors.
I don't think there is a better way to prove that speaking up about mental health is worth it than spending time with another person that is going through something similar. As a psychologist I learned a lot of theories but it was only until I saw in my own skin and in the stories of those that I care about, the urgency and need of a change in the whole conception of mental health that I convinced myself of the importance of speaking up. Yes, the truth is that it isn't a easy road, and that you'll find a lot of bumps along the way. And also another truth is that we need more than testimonies to make a change, we need policies and educational programs. But also we need urgently a huge social change which can be lead by all those brave warriors who dare to accept in the light of a conversation with someone that they, too, have a mental health condition. That they go to therapy and take medications, and have a psychiatrist or psychologist or both, that there has been way too many sleepless and fearful nights and that their minds have way more horrible, intrusive thoughts than anyone can possibly imagine.
In my personal journey it was a process before I could come out of the mental health closet, as I like to call it. First I needed to digest the information myself, then share it with my closest friends and family and eventually I spoke about it with more and more people. It took me 5 years until I decided that I needed to speak up in order to give others a voice, a comfort and a representation, but I highly doubt it would have happened if my life hasn't been stopped completely. When everything is turned upside down and people inevitably started asking questions and wondering, I needed to come clean. And not just with the basic simple diagnostic answer, but with educational responses. Because people need to learn that it happens. More than they think about and in a different way than the stereotypical one.
And the beautiful thing was that many people were encouraged, either to speak to me directly about their experiences or to share them with their loved ones while creating more awareness and education. Those are my warriors and the people who make it all worth it: no matter if you just started this journey or if you gave a huge step like coming clean about your diagnosis on social platforms, or if you had the awkward conversation with the parent who thought "mental illnesses will never invade my perfect family". To those who struggle daily but still get up and get to work or to study or at least manage to get a bath, who got help, even if there are weeks in which one can just hate their therapist and if there are days when you aren't sure if you took your medications or didn't but still make their best efforts. To those who just get nerve-racking anxiety 2 or 3 days before any social event but still manage to show up even if it's just for some minutes. To all of us who've learned to accept our conditions as that: conditions that don't define us and that we may never cure but sure will learn to live with them. To all of us who laugh when people tell us that we are very brave to live the life we have, because we know that it isn't like we had chosen it and the remaining option is simply to disappear from this world, which we hardly try to make sure isn't even on the map.
To all fellow warriors, I salute you. Thank you for the inspiration.

Mental health awareness month.

Once again, like every year, we find ourselves on the mental health awareness month: May. I’ve been reflecting a lot on what this means, beyond this huge name that seems more complex without bringing further explanation.

To be truly aware of mental health is to acknowledge in all of its depths what it implies, to truly accept all of what mental health brings with it. And the base of that, which is logic basically, is to know that you and I, and every single human being we cross our paths with should be informed and involved at least in a minimum way with things regarding mental health. 

Why? Because we all have a mental health. We all have thoughts, emotions, psyché, mental state, mind, call it how you want. But as well as we all have a heart and know even if it’s a minimum of how to keep it healthy and avoid a heart attack, or how to recognize one and what to do in that case to preserve life, why can’t we do the same with our mental health? Because it isn’t tangible, because we can’t measure it so most believe it to be nonexistent. Mental health shouldn’t be a matter that only professionals of that field and the lucky (not so few) people that have to deal with conditions. It’s a matter of every single human, and a social issue that needs to be dealt with. Because we keep listening to in growing statistics that show us that at least the conditions aren’t slowing down. It isn’t about every one becoming a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist. Rather, it’s about having a more educated answer that “I don’t believe you have it so I’ll treat you tough enough so you’ll be shaken to the core and that take depression goes away” to when someone decides to share their mental health condition reality with others.

It’s a good way to start, and we shall continue to open ourselves to the conversation. Because we carry our diagnosis, the ones who have it, a burden. As a deep dark secret that no one else has. But when we dare to talk, as far of our comfort zone as it may seem and as scary as it is, we find that people around us are just like us. Some even share symptoms or experiences with us, some of our family members who we thought were untouchable share our diagnosis and the road goes from something very lonely and isolated to one in which we comfort and support each other with a common, before unspoken, reality. We need to talk because that’s all it takes, one person opening up to their inner circle, to make other voices raise up and give them the chance to heal even a bit by knowing they aren’t alone.

Mental health awareness is also creating a space in which no one has to feel ever again the shame that comes when accepting out loud the fact that they go to therapy, or take medication, or have a lifetime condition, or all together. Someone asked me before that if I had changed my future plans of being a mom, having chronic, hereditary mental health condition. And of course it scares me that my hypothetical kids could suffer, and I have no other option besides prevention, monitoring and faith. But I can do my part to create, at least in the people that surround me, a space with less and less stigma every single day. By talking openly. By being honest. By educating. Because I know that I won’t be the last person with a mental health condition, and no matter if the people to come include more of my family members or people I’ll never met. No matter that, the present and future mental health patients deserve a world with less stigma that the one people before us had. And the ones sometimes we still have.