Mental Health and Mental Misunderstanding

The world today can be frightening and hard for the 17.3 million people in the United States struggling with mental health issues like depression, me being one of them. 

This world pressures people to be perfect and to conform to what is considered the "social norms" to the extent where people who are suffering from a chemical imbalance in their brain feel as though they are not allowed to succeed as easily as their fellow people around them. This pressure occurs so strongly in the educational systems. 

Middle school and High School are hard enough, but when you add in a conformity it becomes a struggle to survive. I felt as though no one understood me, because if I'm being honest? Not many people did, and I learned that the hard way. When you struggle with a mental illness your eyes are opened to how bad this world is, how horrible people can be without any specific reason as to why. You trust when you shouldn't and then it always backfires. You feel as though no one wants you to move forward or succeed in the school system and you swim against the flow of your peers.
My own friends treated me differently when they found out that I struggled with severe depression and self-harm. I was pitied, yet no one ever asked how I was doing, how I was feeling, or if I needed to talk. I was told to "just stop" or "I have it too! Wow, I know what you are feeling!" Except those who told me they knew what I was feeling lied to me, they acted as though it wasn't a big deal and they would say I was just faking or tired. But I was tired, just not in the way they assumed. 
I wasn't sleeping because I wanted to, I wasn't sleeping because I was falling apart inside and no one could hear me cry. I was tired of having my friends tell me all their problems and expecting me to help them while they just left me to walk solo on the sidewalk. 
Mental illnesses actually add a strong burden for learning and education and while there are therapists that we are "supposed" to talk to, that never really helps because most students with a mental illness don't want people to know, they just want to be normal. Normal, that is something that is so grey, there is no true definition of normal and that is due to the fact that students are all different but don't seem to fully understand what mental illnesses are and the burdens they create.


I struggled to learn because I couldn't bring myself to ask questions in class, I had no motivation to get anything done and would stare at my homework sheets with nothing written on them. My head would be bowed in class because I didn't want the teacher to call on me due to the fact that I felt like my answers didn't matter and that no one wanted to hear my opinion. This fear and doubt are extremely common in young adults and teenagers when it comes to schooling and even social gatherings which causes there to be almost a learning deficit placed on the mentally ill that is extremely assuming and horrible. People with mental illnesses don't ask to be born with a chemical imbalance in their brain, to feel awful about themselves, to fear going outside, or to hide who they really are because they are scared of being judged or treated differently by both peers and teachers. 

I would go through episodes where I wouldn't even want to leave my bed, I felt there was no reason to.

I never knew what was happening to me or why I felt the way I felt until I was an 8th grader. Up until then I blamed my drastic mood changes, lack of interest, depretion of energy and decreasing self worth on just being a "typical moody teenager". Except that excuse stopped working when I noticed that no one else I talked to felt that same way. 
Being that young I was unable to actually pinpoint that I had severe depression until I actually did research, a 14 year old googling why they cry themselves to sleep at night, why they hurt themself, and why they aren't like everyone else, because there was no one there to explain what could be happening.
I thought I was an accident, a malformed human being who should have never been born, and there are so many people who feel that same way even if they know that they have a mental illness. Why is this allowed in our society? Students struggling with mental illnesses of any kind are not able to reach some of the individual opportunities that are offered to other students because they either don't believe they deserve to or they don't have the desire to because they feel like they will never be like everyone else around them, or they are simply hiding from society.
   When you are in high school you hear all these people talking about how "depressed" they are, or that they struggle with depression, except when you ask them why they say those things their responses are complete garbage. "I've been tired for a week." "I don't want to draw anymore, but mainly cause I am too busy with sports." "I'm so sad, my dog died." Those are not signs of depression, or any kind of mental illness, those are signs of being a human being. When one loses a loved one they are sad, even depressed, for periods of time but never for years on end. When one has been tired for a week is it because they are cranking out homework every night? Or because they literally can't sleep because their minds are terrorizing them? Yet, as a high schooler and hearing those statements I assumed that people understood what I was going through. Until one day a girl I was hanging out with suddenly grabbed my arm violently and yanked it up so she could look at it before loudly exclaiming "What are these, Em?" in a very demanding tone. Which I responded to by yanking my arm away, turning bright red as people began looking, and said "I scraped it up sliding in a softball game, no big deal." Nice right? Yeah, that was when I realized maybe I truly was alone.


Students need to be taught at a younger age what mental illnesses truly are and the horrors that their fellow peers experience under the surface. To understand how hard it is for people with mental illness to feel equal to everyone around them and succeed in individual opportunities when they feel like failures and mistakes. This is why I took responsibility upon myself to create art that represented what was happening inside the heads of those lost in a land full of pain and fear. 
When a student is struggling with their education due to something that is not under their control they can feel as though there is no one who would ever understand them and that they are utterly alone. Those feelings in themselves are burdening on the way one thinks. The students can struggle with their schooling due simply to the fact that they do not feel good enough or that they are not smart enough to complete the tasks that are placed in front of them. Once they feel that they are not smart enough their mind takes the illusary truth effect to where they actually believe that they will never be smart enough which completely changes their learning. They begin to focus less, talk less and stop trying because they feel like they would never have a chance to be good enough. With that, schools do not seem to be making any change to help those students and do their best to try to change the student's ideas of who they are and what their worth is. Being honest, if a teacher would have simply noticed and asked me if I was doing alright or told me that I was smart enough my attitude would have completely changed about myself. Except there didn't seem to be anyone there for me, I felt like I was drowning in an empty sea of my own thoughts.
"Unfortunately, social stigma around mental illness still exists among people of all ages. As a result, high school and college students often hesitate to seek help for depression." (Adolescent Depression in Schools. Newport Academy, Feb. 14, 2018, https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/mental-health/adolescent-depression-in-schools/). When they are not seeking help for their depression the depression actually gets worse, they have no one to talk to and the anxiety caused by the stigma increases. This can then decrease their education by the increase in anxiety in a very negative correlation.
Schools need to take into consideration the struggles some of their students are having with mental illnesses and understand the serious effects that can be had on their education. There should be classes about mental illness in the younger grades to help teach younger students that have mental illnesses that it is something that is serious but not to be judged. Everyone has struggles in their lives and mental illnesses should not be taken any differently.