Anyone else sick of hearing the same awful news, awful trends, & NO major changes to our system, mass msgs or education protocols, as a result?
1st story – you have a doctor, well established, top of her profession, as told by her father “no history of mental illness.” We all know docs. They studied their asses off to get into med school, then thru med school, then residency. They’re highly motivated individuals who charge fwd & charge thru. They try to save others. No task is too large. Even when they feel down, they muscle on.
Can we STOP the narrative that you need to have had a diagnosed “mental illness” to succumb to major MH drops, & even suicide? Stress & trauma build silently in our systems. Especially for ppl so passionate abt their work, they pour themselves INTO it. The result is less time for themselves, less time for self care, more getting lost in their responsibilities & unfortunately more risk factors for many health complications. But she wasn’t “diagnosed w mental illness” …so this shouldn’t have happened, right? Wrong.
We’re a society of walking wounded. This BS of “1 in 5” campaigns & Stop Stigma against “them” HAS to STOP. It literally is killing ppl & this is case in point. It allows everyone to say – but I havent been diagnosed, “not me.”
Well if we took care of our MH the way we do our physical, how many WOULD be diagnosed? If not diagnosed, how many would understand how stress & trauma build & can take us down. The loss of the head of UPenn’s counseling center wasn’t enough evidence that this can happen to anyone?
It especially happens to those who love their work, are hard chargers, & lose themselves in their passion, & aren’t told to prioritize SELF care. If they’re heroes, they’re always super heroes, right? No, they’re human. We’re all human. That goes for the EMT worker we tragically lost to suicide. It goes for the men/women of our military who aren’t using the MH services available to them (article on right), & it goes for a whole world, that’s facing this (not the 1 in 3 the WSJ spoke abt), the #5in5 who’ve all been impacted. Mass msgs matter! Change is needed!