No matter how many conversations are had or how many awareness efforts take place when it comes to suicide prevention, it seems society doesn't know how to make a positive difference. I get it. Death is a hard thing for people in general, and suicide grates harder against that. I'm here to share some dos and don'ts for suicide prevention that can help. (Note: This post has a content warning.)
Surviving Mental Health Stigma
Britney Spears' conservatorship has been a hot topic since she was able to say her piece in court on June 23. It's caused fans to rally behind her, supporting her as she struggles with being under other peoples' control for more than a decade and the impact that's had on her mental wellbeing. Perhaps ironically, it was a mental health crisis that kicked off the conservatorship, to begin with. I can't help but wonder, what has been mental health stigma's role in keeping that conservatorship in place?
Recent events in tennis have highlighted mental health stigma in sports and mental health struggles in sports in general. I'll be honest; I don't follow sports—neither the actual games/matches/events nor the athletes—but the controversy with tennis player Naomi Osaka bowing out of the French Open due to backlash over her mental health self-care decision caught my attention.
As someone with skin picking disorder, summer was always a time of dread. It was as if the warm weather grew stigma the same way it could grow plants. Guidance during those days of my life would have been great for handling fear and shame, and a short summer guide to surviving skin picking disorder stigma is exactly what I'd like to offer now.
It's always nice to see folks speaking up in the name of mental health awareness. Continuing the conversation about mental health and mental illness is one of the key things we can do when combatting mental health stigma, but it's important to communicate in these situations effectively. I'd like to use what happened with Demi Lovato and a small frozen yogurt business as a starting point and example for this conversation.
Like many aspects of mental health, therapy is steeped in stigma. People talk about it in hushed tones and behind closed doors, but really, we need to have open conversations about therapy. In this blog post, I'm going to share my thoughts on why.
Mental illnesses can have destructive behaviors that accompany them, and these behaviors can often be difficult to understand and, like mental health in general, cloaked in stigma. Because of that, addressing destructive behaviors linked to mental illness can be a challenge, but it's an important part of showing support to those who struggle.
It's perhaps an odd thing to say, but it's okay to get mad about mental health stigma. The reason I wanted to broach this discussion at all is because I know many, myself included, often talk about being calm and collected when it comes to stigma. After something that happened recently, I wanted to say it's also okay to be made when stigma for mental health is perpetuated.
Conversations and awareness efforts for mental health and mental illness do talk about certain disorders, but there are still many mental health conditions we generally don't talk about that we need to destigmatize. Because there is this narrowness of conversation and the heavy stigma around many mental illnesses, there's some work to do when it comes to even approaching how we can tackle the stigma they face.
The global pandemic has altered many aspects of our day-to-day lives, but what is its impact on mental health stigma? From what I've seen of discussions and news reports and so forth, more and more folks are experiencing mental health struggles during this change in lifestyle and time of uncertainty. I wonder, though, what impact that might have on how mental health is treated by society.