From my perspective as an abuse survivor, if you think there’s even a chance your child has been abused, bullied, or is simply dealing with mental health challenges that need help, get the help early if you can. It only gets worse the longer you wait. Read the examples, and if any of them sound like your kid, do something.
Similar to what I’ve said many times about exercise or other things that might make a small impact on our mental health, art and music won’t change everything, but they certainly aren’t going to hurt. They might only make us feel better, but isn’t that the point?
No, not really, but what we should do is be sure to maintain healthy boundaries. The article below is about Compassion Fatigue. It’s real. I’ve known people who’ve reached that point, and I’ve watched people online reach that point, where they write and share about every new abuse case they see until they just disappear online because they have become overwhelmed.
We have to face the fact that, as much as we might not openly admit it, we live in a society where kids with mental illness have very little hope, and we don’t care enough to change that. They, their parents, and their siblings are “others” that we’d rather not be bothered with. Societally, we’d rather they went away than be concerned with figuring out ways to help them.
That’s not good enough.
People with depression are less likely to report thriving regarding mental well-being 10 years later, but 10% of them do anyway.
Only 21% of people not diagnosed with depression reported thriving regarding their mental well-being, so it’s not like most people are living at that point anyway, for various reasons. Being diagnosed with depression doesn’t automatically make it impossible for you to recover and thrive. It’s just a bit harder.
More importantly, the article below talks about 67% of the people diagnosed with depression reporting no symptoms of it 10 years later.
People do recover from mental health issues. They can get better. It happens. Some even meet the criteria for mental well-being that only 21% of the world meets.
The danger comes in when we try to rationalize this belief because it demands we find a reason why whenever someone suffers some sort of calamity. Otherwise, we’d have to admit the world isn’t fair. We don’t want to do that, so we make up a reason why they deserve it.
This, of course, is classic victim blaming
