We Are All A Little Crazy

May is mental health awareness month, and as a psychology major, mental health and mental illness is a normal thing for me to hear and for me to talk about. But for many others, it isn't. It makes people feel uncomfortable or awkward, and they get the image of a crazy person. This image can vary, but typically, they think of a person who is hearing voices or seeing things.

The stigma that is associated with mental health is saddening. This stigma, comes from ignorance and fear. The judgement passed on people with a mental illness, is in a sense, a mental illness itself. Those who pass judgement are coping with the fear they have, which, in itself, is a defense mechanism. Society needs to learn to look at mental health the same way it looks at other forms of medicine. Your brain can get sick, just like your stomach or your heart. By sick, I don't mean cancer, I mean depression and anxiety. The chemical imbalances are an illness, just as cardiovascular disease or acid re-flux are illnesses.

Mental illness is one of the leading causes of disability in today's world. Depression, the largest mental illness, is the 3rd leading cause of disability. With all the people diagnosed with a mental health problem, filing for assistance due to their disability, you would think that they are being helped. But the sad truth is that most aren't.

Most people don't understand what depression really is. In a talk by comedian Ruby Wax, she describes people's reaction to depression perfectly. She says that when she was institutionalized for depression, people would tell her to "perk up." Jokingly, she says "Because I didn't think of that already." But that is the truth. Those not educated in psychology don't understand that depression is more than just feeling sad. Telling yourself to feel happy or to smile or to move on, is not going to work. True depression is hopelessness. It's not seeing that things can get better. It's a frame of mine that is hard to shake. People who are genuinely depressed, need mental health care.

Vikram Patel is a mental health advocate, and a psychologist who has created a model to help those with mental illness.  In Europe alone, 50% of those with mental illness do not receive the care they need, and once you look at developing countries, the number increases to a staggering 90%. That's 90% of people who are not being treated. That, to me, is insane.

Patel spoke at a TED conference in June of 2012 in Scotland. Here, he described in more detail what I mentioned above. He went on to describe a model of care that involves task shifting. This trains general community members to be able to do specific medical tasks, such as delivering babies or diagnosing particular illnesses. So why not mental health care too?

This would allow those in developing countries that do not have access to psychiatrists, to receive some form of metal health care. Through this model, you can train community members in specific types of psychotherapy, such as cognitive or psychosocial therapies. In his research, Patel found that this community treatment has a high success rate with depression and anxiety. Empowering community members to take control of their lives and the lives of their family and friends is a great thing. Seeing people as people and not as their diagnosis of schizophrenia or depressed, is where it starts, and where it goes, is endless.

While we focus on money and war and water and oil, mental health falls away. I'm not saying those things aren't important, I know they are, but as someone who has been on both sides of the mental health system, I can tell you, first hand, the importance of care. So what do we do? How do we help? I don't have those answers, but I can tell you that I am going to use my degree that I will be getting in 9 short days to figure it out.