As the illness of any other body part is due to different causes, the same is mental illness. It affects a person’s thinking, and mental illness is a very wide spectrum of diseases that society is not educated about due to the taboo and shame attached to mental illness.
So diseases that fall under mental illness are depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia. These conditions may be for a mere amount of time or long-lasting. They can affect the ability to communicated and daily functioning too.
Why is there a lack of information about mental health in society?: As per Dennis Begos
Mental health broadly comprises our social, emotional, and psychological wellbeing. Even our thoughts about something, feeling about and acting on it. It can also affect how you handle your stress, sadness, loneliness, or any situation. A person diagnosed with any mental health issue can potentially experience mental, physical, and social wellbeing.
As per Dennis Begos, society ignoring the seriousness of mental issues has been one of the major reasons for increasing mental illness cases.
As the weightage given to physical health in homes, hospitals, schools, and workplaces, the same should be given to mental health and mental illness. Mental illnesses like depression can potentially increase the onset of many other physical problems, which can be as dangerous as stroke, heart diseases, and type-2 diabetes.
Sufferings caused by lack of importance to mental health
As mental illness is highly common in the US-
- It’s estimated that more than fifty percent of the population will be diagnosed with any sort of mental illness in their life span.
- In America, one in five Americans will be experiencing some sort of mental illness in a year.
- One in five children is estimated to either currently or at some point in their lives will suffer from a serious mental health issue.
- For the present situation, statistics state one in every 25 Americans lives with mental conditions that are serious like PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia.
Causes of mental illness
There is no single listed reasonor cause of mental health there are a number of them like
- Any traumatic early life experience- trauma, any kind of abuse, mental or physical, sexual assault, witnessing violence, extreme toxicity towards them by their close ones.
- Any other medical conditions that are chronic either to them or people close to them can affect their mental health.
- The genetic-some chemical imbalance that has been going on in the family for generations.
- Hard drugs or alcohol abuse
- The isolation or loneliness, or separation anxiety
Mental health should be a part of the education system as it can affect people of any age and goes on for years due to negligence, lack of knowledge, ignorance, shame, and lack of detectability factors in the early stages. As it affects everyone and it’s present everywhere, people should talk about it to everyone, and everywhere the early it gets diagnosed, the early it gets cured.
