Yesterday, I went to a party that turned sour. Being the end of a long and stressful half term, people were pretty determined to go out on a bender and get completely smashed. Which they did. But the usual, standard happy dancing and cuddling turned into hysterical crying, projectile vomiting and careless words slurred at the wrong person at precisely the wrong time.
It was at this party that I had my first encounter with external mental health discrimination. Of course, since becoming mentally ill, I have discriminated against myself many a time, saying things such as 'I'm crazy' 'Who'd want to be friends with a psycho?'. I punish myself for being unwell in unimaginably horrible ways, and I'll have to live with the mental and physical scars even if I do recover. But never have I experienced any external derogatory treatment about my problem until one of my best friends got drunk and told me what she actually thought. I hope she didn't mean it, and I don't think any worse of her for it but it has made me realise how people's suffering is made one hundred times worse by the prejudices that surround mental instability, even if the unwell person experiences no active discrimination. I didn't tell my best and closest friends about my mental health problem for 5 months, because I was too ashamed and utterly terrified that they would reject me and not want me around any more. And all of that fear came from the social taboo that being mentally ill was something to be secretive about, something to be apologetic for. But if you had a broken leg, you wouldn't walk around on it without a cast and hope that the problem just went away. You wouldn't hide it from people and you wouldn't be scared of being called a cripple. So why should a mentally ill person suffer in silence for fear of losing friends and being treated badly? We discriminate against ourselves for something we have no control over. Other people discriminate against us for something we can't change alone. And this has to stop.
Please watch this video. It couldn't be more true.
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