Woman with megaphone

Sharing – Ending Mental Health Stigma Takes More Than Talking

I think Sam Dylan Finch nails it pretty well. This is undoubtedly true.

While talking about mental health is a great starting place, more will be needed to truly better the lives of those with mental health conditions.

So what else is needed? How’s this list for starters? (Read the article linked below for more details.)

  • Systemic change
  • Research and funding
  • Media interventions
  • Mental health literacy
  • Increased awareness

Obviously, talking about it can lead to these other things. Not talking about it won’t get us anywhere. But we need to do more than talk, we need to figure out better ways to treat people who need it, and make it accessible. That doesn’t happen until all of society understands its importance and is truly educated about it. So, keep talking, but also keep demanding better.

https://psychcentral.com/health/if-we-want-to-end-mental-health-stigma-it-will-take-more-than-talking

Similar Posts

  • Link – ‘I Survived a Suicide Attempt’

    BuzzFeed recently interviewed four suicide attempt survivors in a moving video. Each spoke about the challenges they faced that led them to attempt to take their own lives, and then about the ways they’ve learned to cope since then. “It gets better,” one of the interviewees, whose name isn’t shared, says in the video below….

  • Sharing – How to Respond When Mental Health Advice Feels Like Judgment

    Look, I get it, you tried something and it helped you, or you’ve seen it help someone else. Clearly, you are excited about the possibility of helping others, but you’re forgetting something. You’re forgetting that the person you are sharing this advice with, isn’t you.

    When you come walking into a conversation with friends, or especially into online communities with statements like the ones above, the message you are actually sending is “Gee, fixing this is easy, you’re just doing it wrong”.

    Imagine using those actual words towards someone you barely know. You wouldn’t, would you? At least if you’re a decent human being, you wouldn’t. But you are totally willing to take your beliefs, your own experience, and completely railroad another person’s current reality with it, you are doing something awfully similar. In a moment of emotional vulnerability, you have come in, guns blazing, with the suggestion that all of this pain they are in, and all of this struggling they are going through, should have been easy to avoid.

  • Sharing – People Aren’t ‘Addicted’ to Wearing Masks, They’re Traumatized

    ‘ve been describing it to friends and coworkers as “the inability to just turn off the fear of other people and their germs”. Because, in some ways, that’s exactly what it was. I’ve spent a year plus barely leaving my house. Sure, I worked from home even before the pandemic, but it’s an extreme sport now, going into the back yard is an adventure into a strange and exotic place, let alone being around other people.

    Yesterday, however, I did manage to get out and meet up with a friend and former coworker. I won’t say it wasn’t awkward. But, it wasn’t as awkward as my anxiety had built it up in my head, mostly because I think we both knew it was awkward, and went out of our way to figure out what we were comfortable with. We met in the office building where she works, wearing masks. She asked if I wanted to keep being masked walking to lunch, and we agreed to not, and to sit outside to be safer. And she asked before giving me a hug after lunch.

    It was an important lesson to me, that we need to navigate this together with the people we care about, and meet them at the level where they are comfortable. It’s not about racing to be the most “normal” group, it’s about making sure everyone comes along, and is comfortable, because we’ve all dealt with various levels of trauma over the last 14-15 months, trauma that will show up in a variety of ways. There’s nothing wrong with people who are slower to feel comfortable, they are just doing what they can. I’d rather meet them where they are, and where I am, than not see them at all anymore, or shame them about their own hesitation. It’s not a race.

  • Sharing – Mental Health: When People Tell You How They Feel, Believe Them.

    It’s not just saying I believe you when someone tells you they are struggling with depression or anxiety. It’s all of the subtle ways we show them that we don’t believe them. The “But you don’t look”, the “you’ll be fine”, the toxic positivity, the refusal to change your own behavior in supportive ways, etc., do just as much damage. They send the message that we don’t believe what you just said is serious enough to warrant doing anything differently.

    Is that the message you want to send someone who trusted you enough to admit they are struggling with you? That their struggles aren’t valid enough for you to do anything differently?

  • Link – Childhood abuse still impacting your day-to-day life? Read this!

    Research is just now beginning to understand how profoundly the emotional trauma of early child hood affects a person as an adult. They realized that if not healed, these early childhood emotional wounds, and the subconscious attitudes adopted because of them, would dictate the adult’s reaction to, and path through, life. Thus we walk around…

  • Link – Is There a Stigma Against Open Discussions about Mental Illness Online?

    “This is why we can’t have nice things. As millennials and teens turn more to social media and other online sources for validation and connectivity, they will find new forms of healing through these online interactions. Celebrities like Demi Lovato have endorsed this behavior, such as with her “Be Vocal: Speak Up For Mental Health”…

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)