Abuse, Anxiety and Mental Health (A Short Film)

I'm sharing this deeply moving, powerful short film not simply because abuse is a topic around which there cannot be too much awareness but because anxiety doesn't come from nowhere. Abuse isn't the only cause (there are many, even if you have been abused) but the effects of abuse are inseparable from mental health, whether or not you have a clinically diagnosable mental illness.

A friend and fellow blogger, Magicplum, made the film with the goal of abuse prevention. Her hope was for “anyone watching who related to the themes, to feel less alone, and to have their feelings and experiences validated in some way. “ Similarly, one of the messages I'd like to see promoted around mental health is that it isn't just the problem of the mentally ill; That person, perhaps that child, you put over there in the box with a label so society can forget about them.

Mental health is everybody's problem because good luck going through life never being affected by other people's stuff. Abuse is one such issue. It affects the lives of innumerable individuals. Some of them develop mental health issues like depression, or PTSD. Too many of their stories are never told, let alone addressed.

(Take care. It may be triggering for some.)

Magicplum says it better than I could when she says, “it can take a long time to realise and accept that ways in which adults treated you as a child were wrong. It was only when my son was born that I began to fully realise how wrong things had been in my own childhood. I concentrated on verbal/emotional abuse as I had just a ten minute time frame, but all forms of abuse have a deep and lasting effect on a person’s emotional well-being and mental health.
I hoped the film might help people consider more carefully how they treat and talk to children. In public I regularly witness children being spoken to rudely and contemptuously, sometimes with a slap thrown in. If we behaved in this way with our friends and our work colleagues, we wouldn’t have any friends, we’d soon be fired. Children can’t up and walk away, they can’t fire us. All they can do is take what we throw at them and somehow try to survive the consequences throughout the rest of their lives.”

Please take a few moments to watch. Consider giving what you can to abuse prevention, especially over the Holiday season –even if it’s just an open mind.

"Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion."--the Dalai Lama