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What is Mental Health? - by Karla Silva

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    179085

    • Karla Silva at Pima Community College
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    What is mental health? Is it waking up every day optimistic for the day  ahead? Or is it crying yourself to sleep at night because you get  overwhelmed with your own emotions? Well ladies and gentlemen it is  actually both of them. It is the pretty and the ugly that we experience  throughout our lifetime. Without the ugly we can’t appreciate the pretty,  but sometimes the ugly tends to stay a lot longer then we hope for. That  is when our brains tend to play tricks on us and life doesn’t seem as great as it used to be.

    When I got into high school, the topic of mental health was a huge one. You would hear students around you joke about “You’re always quiet, you must be depressed.” Or “Stop being sad, you’re going to end up kill yourself.” I didn’t find any of  these jokes funny since a friend of mine committed suicide just two years into high school. It’s sad how people don’t realize the internal battles that everyone must fight just to make it through the day.

    It all started when I was a little girl. I never understood why I was so angry all the time or why I felt this deep, lonely feeling in my chest. It was constant arguing and disappointment when no one, not even my own family, would understand what was going on with me. That was something I found quite ironic since I was told later on that my father had suffered the same feelings throughout his life and how depression can be hereditary as well. That just added to my anger because how could they not understand? It was literally in front of their face all along! It was honestly something I thought everyone felt and that those nasty feelings would pass, until I got older and noticed everyone around me grew out of that “phase” and I didn’t. It was many, many, MANY years of confusion until I finally got an idea of what was going on with me. Things started to make sense a little, but it still didn’t give me the answer I wanted. What was that ugly feeling in my chest and why didn’t it go away? 

    That ugly feeling happened to be called depression and the fact that it  didn’t go away was my anxiety. In my culture, those two things are seen as a sign of weakness and it is always about “just thinking more positively”. Little do they know it is much more than that. That is when I realized why my father never spoke up about his mental health growing up. I feel like I would’ve been able to get help sooner if he talked about it to someone. Nonetheless, It wasn’t until I reached my breaking point that my parents actually paid attention to what was going on with me and finally decided to take my mental health seriously. I could not believe that it took me talking about suicide for someone I love to notice something was going on.

    We looked into many different psychologists and psychiatrists until we found one that was the perfect one for me. Someone that listened and didn’t just want to shove pills down my throat before figuring out the issue. If you’re looking into getting help for yourself or someone you love, most ways to be able to find someone is by calling your insurance and asking them for a list of providers. You can also talk to your primary doctor to see your different options and what kind of therapist is best for you. There are also websites like “betterhelp.com” or “psychologytoday.com” that can help you out with that as well. Luckily there are many different options for you to explore now than there was before.          

    Every year 850,000 people die from suicide due to severe depression. If  mental health was taken more seriously and talked about more, then maybe people wouldn’t be so afraid to speak out on the topic. There are many therapists that are willing to help at a very low cost or no cost at all. My advice for everyone going through it is to not give up. Even though it may seem like a long road ahead, there is always light at the end of the tunnel and when you least expect it, you’ll be feeling like yourself again. I’m still on the road to a better mentality but like everything, you have your good and bad days. The secret is to never lose faith and to always believe in yourself, even when others don’t. If my blog helps at least one person out, that is already taking a foot in the right direction.

    This page titled What is Mental Health? - by Karla Silva is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Karla Silva at Pima Community College.