‘In a recent Australian survey people with mental illness and their families said less stigma was the number-one thing that would make their lives better.’ (Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health 2003).
Often the stigma that those with a mental illness face is more debilitating than the actual disease. It always seemed like an interesting and powerful fact to me but only recently have I come to realise just how true it is.
I first started looking at the issue of stigma because I realised it contributed to my uncles death in 2001. My Uncle committed suicide after a long fight with depression and numerous suicide attempts. I was only 12, I had never even heard of the term mental illness, I didn't even know my uncle was sick, it wasn't something we had been taught about in health class alongside alcohol abuse, smoking etc. This made me so angry, how could my uncle die from a disease I didn't even know existed?? How come nobody ever told me??
To make matters worse my uncles suicide occurred after being sent home from hospital early in the new year due to staff cut backs during the holiday period as they could not cater for him even though he was clearly suicidal and made his intentions clear to the staff at the hospital. The more I looked into mental illness the more I realised that not only was society misinformed but that it was this misunderstanding that was and is still informing and influencing the governments response or lack of response to care for those suffering from this misfortune.
For me it was an issue of justice it was about making things right, it was a fight against the government, against the media. I didn't really see it at the individual, personal level I didn't ever consider how else it affected my Uncle I only saw the big effect my uncle was dead.
I now understand stigma from a totally different perspective. When you suffer from a mental illness stigma affects your life in unimaginable ways. I now truly understand what they mean when they say the stigma can be worse than the illness. If suffering from depression doesn't rob you of everything you have stigma takes the rest!
No one can imagine what is like to be so ill, even scared for your life, to be going through the biggest thing you have ever had to face and to not be able to tell the people around you for fear of how they will react. When you have cancer or break your arm or something at least you can count on the people around you to support you but with depression it is different.
You are scared to go to the dr's because you wonder what they will think of you? You wonder if you can tell your friends or will they laugh? You start having to weave webs of lies about where you have been when you are seeing the psychiatrist or psychologist. You walk into a room and wonder how many people in there know? Some people start avoiding you, some stop talking to you at all. Someone who you thought was a close friend tells you that they want nothing to do with 'people like you', that 'if you just have more faith and pray you will be healed'. 'There is no such thing as depression, you are choosing this'.
Depression cost me everything but God, who sticks with me through it all. The worst of it I lost my friends who slowly walked away, some stating their reasons, some just walking out of my life. So if you asked me if I could go back would I still tell people what I was going through I would tell them: Firstly if I could go back I would hope to never go through the same thing again but yes I would still be honest about my experience with depression and still am to this day. If we don't speak out about our experience people will never have the chance to understand, the stigma will continue and more people will die.
If I can speak out about my experience then maybe others will be strong enough to stand up and get help when they need it and if that costs me everything I have it will still be worth it.
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