The Picture of Mental Health

Mental illness. Think about it for a minute. Roll the term around in your head. Do you form a picture in your imagination? What does it look like? Does it look like the painting below whose creator suffered from painful bouts of anxiety?

"Siesta" by Vincent Van Gogh

The National Institute of Mental Health, NAMI,  reports that one in four adults, or about 57.7 million Americans, experience a mental health disorder each year. On March 5th I had the pleasure of listening to a presentation from two NAMI advocates who helped to change how we think of mental illness. Often mental illness is brought on by a combination of genetics and environmental factors. That means that as you look around yourself and take in all the beautiful faces, what you don't see are people that have inherited a susceptibility to mental illness. Does that mean they're on the verge of a mental illness? No. Yes. Maybe? As our presenters explained, it may take the stress of college life, a car accident, or the trauma associated of being in a war to trigger the illness.  

It can also be hard to accept that one has a mental illness which can make it that much more difficult to receive treatment. Treatment comes in many forms from counseling to medication (which may have it's own set of unique side effects), but often the most beneficial treatment comes in the form of peer support. NAMI can help bring people together who suffer from, or who have a loved one who suffers from mental illness. A wealth of resources can be found on their website.

 I continually have to tell myself to not judge a book by it's cover. People who have mental illness can still live relatively normal lives, and be productive members of society, and this presentation helped to remind me of that. I hope when I'm on fieldwork, and in practice after graduating, that I can continue to treat people based on their individual experiences and not based on their diagnosis.