Why is it important to be vocal about mental health?

If we talk about mental health, over 90 million Indians, which is 7.5% population of the country suffer from a mental disorder as per a report from WHO, yet people are still afraid to talk about it. Encouraging people to talk about it we can break the stereotypes, improve the relations and recovery, and remove the stigma out of something that affects us all. When it comes to mental health, there are two types of stigma 

a. Social Stigma

b. Self-stigma.

The social stigma is that we are afraid that we will be judged about the illness we have, we will be characterized by the prejudicial attitude and discrimination towards us or by an individual or society. Self-stigma occurs when the person is aware of the stereotypes that describe the group and agrees with them. Stigma may seem like an abstract concept but the effects are real and harmful. So social stigma is the mental illness that may lead to an individual at such a level where it becomes very difficult for them to improve. It kind of hinders your emotional and personal growth as well. One of the best ways to fight stigma in our daily life is to speak up about mental health or illness. If you experience any kind of challenges the more you talk about it the lesser will be the pain. The more experience you will get and you will be able to figure what exactly is going wrong with you.

There are high chances that you might meet someone who is battling the same issues or facing the same challenges and he or she can hear you and you will feel a little less alone. It is about creating a community and creating an awareness where you talk about your illness which is going to benefit somebody else, or someone else talking about their problems can benefit you. So every time you open up about your mental health and you are reaching out to others maybe you are providing support to those who need it. This is why talking about your mental health is extremely important because you normalize the conversation about mental health which is a taboo or a stigma.

You need to be vocal about your mental health, it is important for people around you or people listening to you. It is beneficial for a community of people who are dealing with mental health issues. We need to treat mental health conditions with the same care and importance as any other medical condition as the brain is also an organ. It needs proper care and attention. Until and unless you will not talk and share about it no one is going to understand what is happening inside you, so for you to get a cure or to come out of that particular zone or phase which is often termed as the dark phase it is very important for you to vocal, and until and unless you are vocal you will not be able to figure out what are the causes or what are the deep triggers which are hindering your mental health, so in a shorter form living and loving with your mental health is possible if you will be vocal about your conditions and if you are vocal about what is going wrong with you or the whole stigma or the whole process. 

Mental health disorders are growing especially given in the current scenario, mental health has become the center point of conversation and attention, and we know because of the growing prevalence of this disorder and in the last few months people have become depressed, they have suffered isolation, lockdown, job opportunities, have impacted our mental health drastically and the more you talk about it people will relate to it and it might help not in a direct way but in an indirect way to care them.

There will be a drastic change in suicide cases as well, and one of the many reasons we should talk about mental health is talking about the suicide ratio. If we talk about mental health and when people get to know about actual challenges and sufferings they might consider going for a healing thing and they might consider a treatment thing rather than ending up their life in a miserable way because suicides are not a solution we know that but people to realize that suicide is not the only way & life is far beyond suicide and ending up your life is not an option we need to be vocal about it. We need to be vocal about treatments, how okay it is to have any kind of disorders related to mental health, it will ease out the pain and it will help a person whose situation is so worse that he has to take a drastic step of ending his life.

Tips:

1. If you are not able to talk face to face write a letter to yourself, your therapist, or who you can rely on or whom you are comfortable sharing your pain or feelings too.

2. Start writing a journal and if you are very skeptical about what is going inside you, write the journal & when you share it more people will come to know about the darker phase and will benefit.