Having been diagnosed with depression, I know first-hand what it's like to suffer from a mental illness and therefore I know exactly how it feels when people belittle and undermine what it's like to go through something like this. It's astounding that in 2015 we are still required to remind various people that mental illnesses are real illnesses, and are just as valid as having any other medical condition.
One aspect of the ignorance surrounding mental illnesses which I'm specifically going to talk about today is the way people, both on the internet and in 'real life' (by which I just mean offline...) use mental illnesses as adjectives, to describe how they're feeling on a particular day, or the manner in which they do something.
So often I see teenagers tweeting things like "Omg I'm so bipolar, I woke up in a foul mood but I'm well happy now!" / "This essay is making me depressed" / "Omg my mum makes me wanna kill my self..." / "It's only 10am and I want my lunch, I'd be a terrible anorexic!" / "Omg I'm soooo OCD about my desk being neat" and so on, and so forth, you get the gist of what I'm trying to depict - I hope.
Not only is it downright offensive to say this sort of thing, it also shows that you are, as a human being, grossly uneducated. It shows that you don't care enough about the people around you to even try and understand how it feels to genuinely want to kill yourself, or to genuinely suffer from an eating disorder. Empathy is clearly something which our generation lacks, because people brush off these sorts of illnesses so casually that is it any wonder they aren't taken seriously?!
Every time I see or hear somebody say something like this, it riles me so much - I don't often argue with them, purely because I don't want to 'go on' about my depression, and there are many people I simply don't want to tell (yet, or ever). I wish I had the courage to put people in their place whenever they say something ridiculous like that, but as confrontational as I can be when it comes to protecting my friends & family, I often let it go when it comes to things that offend me personally.
I hope everything I've said makes sense, and if it makes one person think twice before making a throwaway comment that makes somebody feel 2 inches tall, than I'll be happy. Peace out, homies.
Hit me up on Twitter & Instagram (both are @katygilroyblog) and let me know your thoughts either on those or in the comments below!
Want to read about me being 100 days clean of self harm? 'course you do
