May 2016 is Mental Health Month. The big campaign by National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) this year is to be "Stigma Free." It's becoming more and more evident in our country that those suffering from mental health disorders often do not get the care that they need, and one of the top reasons for this is the associated stigma. We've come a long way in the way that we treat people who battle mental illness, but there are lots of things that remain. Someone who suffers from a mental health disorder is easily labeled as crazy or insane or incompetent. People who admit to seeing a therapist or psychologist are seen as foolish for paying someone to listen to their problems or weak for not being able to figure out life for themselves. Medications are seen as a toxic crutch. I know this not only from walking alongside others in their journeys but because I've experienced it myself.
A year ago I was about a month out of having spent 4 months in intensive outpatient mental health programs; I was nearly done with month 5 of what would become a 7-month medical leave. At the time I was determined to become more involved in mental health advocacy. I had plans to try to write a book about my experiences. I wasn't quite living in the real world, and sometimes that makes you feel overly optimistic about what the future holds.
My optimism wasn't entirely a bad thing. If there doesn't already exist enough stigma surrounding mental health disorders, the feeling gets worse when you have to take a long-term medical leave to deal with it and when you spend time in intensive outpatient programs (though at least I prevented the inpatient stay that likely would have been only months or weeks down the line had I not left when I did). By the time I left on leave, I felt like all the decision-makers at my school saw me as an incompetent liability whose anxiety disorders made me unqualified to be a teacher (panic attacks in the principal's office and before any meeting with department colleagues did not help this). Entering into a treatment program made me feel like I should be separated from the world, unworthy of being allowed to be around "normal" people. It took me a long time to get over those feelings, so it's a good thing that a year ago I was feeling determined to live above the stigma.
Then I had to reenter the real world. Making the decision to start working again was one of the most terrifying things I had ever done; choosing to return to what I now know is my life's vocation and calling was especially scary given that all but a handful of people I had worked with at my last school were trying to convince me that I wasn't cut out to be a teacher. When I started my work as a Math Corps tutor, I was afraid to share my previous experience as a math teacher because it meant explaining why I hadn't taken one of the many always-available math teaching positions. I came up with the blanket "health problems caused by work-related stress" and hoped that no one would ask further, and I only shared that if asked specifically.
This is how I know that stigma still exists - if my medical leave had been caused by a physical health issue, even if it was stress-induced, it wouldn't feel so incriminating to share. To admit mental health problems is to admit weakness, incompetence, and insanity. Some people even get more harsh in professions such as mine that require caring for others - some would declare that I am unfit to work with children because of my anxiety disorder, that I will somehow infect or hurt them, which is far from the truth, but the perception still exists among some groups.
I know that stigma still exists because of how I interact with potential and relatively new friends and colleagues. I always talk about having taught high school math for 3 years, even though I know that the 3rd one I only taught through November. I talk about doctor's appointments when I'm really going to see my psychologist (though she does have a doctorate in psychology). When I have bad anxiety stretches (frequently during a stressful/overwhelming week or when I haven't gotten enough sleep) I talk about rough mornings when what I mean is that my anxiety was so bad that I struggled to get out of bed or spent the morning in tears, and I talk about rough nights when what I mean is that my anxiety was so bad that I couldn't function enough to eat or do work for school or decided to go to sleep insanely early because at least when I'm asleep I'm not anxious. When people dare to ask further details about last year's medical leave, and I'm honest about the mental health issues (because I try not to outright lie even though I skate around the truth), each following moment goes in slow motion as I wonder how they'll react when they see the real me. I live each day wearing a mask wondering if it will ever be safe to take it off, if I dare share my secret. Where social media has always been my outlet, the place where I share what I struggle to say out loud, I've found as I reentered the real world this past year that each time I gain a new Facebook friend, I shy further away from sharing anything mental health related in fear that as I finally learn to make friends, I'll manage to scare them away with my baggage or find one more person who sees me as less for it.
I know that I don't need to share everything with everyone, but to me my social anxiety disorder is part of my identity. Most of the therapists I worked with last year would probably be disappointed to hear me say that my anxiety is part of my identity, but to me it is being truthful. My social anxiety does not define me, but it is a part of me, and, at least for now, I don't want to be rid of it because of how it connects me to others and gives me experience to fight the stigma.
You see, as far as people with a mental health disorder go, I've managed to remain fairly functional. In my entire education, the lowest final grade I've gotten in a term is a B+. I survived 2.5 years of teaching with social anxiety disorder (when a counselor at my first school thought it was admirable that I had managed to become a teacher at all). My family and I have had some growing pains while we've learned to walk this journey together, but they've always been as supportive as humanly possible (I say humanly because there are days we falter). Less than a year after essentially leaving a job at one school, I had found a job at another, and, for the most part, I've thrived. When I have a bad day or bad days, I bounce back more easily and more quickly. I'm making new friends and gradually learning to believe that when I like other people, they like me back.
Others that I've met in the past year have often had more reasons to be affected by the stigma surrounding mental health than I have. I've met people who've been in and out of the hospital over the years, people who have been unable to hold a job, people who have had to work to get and stay sober when substance abuse was the only effective way they could find to cope with their mental illness, people who have had to deal with the fallout of suicide attempts (because as much as our society doesn't want to see anyone commit suicide, we treat those who think about it or attempt it as "other" or "different" or plenty of other judgement-filled words).
I'm one of the lucky ones - 7 months of medical leave (including 4 months in treatment programs), another 2 months of being unemployed, and I found a job, found a church, found some friends, and, most days at least, am coping pretty will with losing both job and church in a very short period of time. While I'm doing well, as I've pulled my life back into what would be considered "normal," I've lived in fear of this dark spot on my past (and sometimes present) that would take away my badge of normalcy. That fear alone is evidence to me that the stigma still exists.
So since this is Mental Health Month, I choose to live above the stigma. I choose to be transparent, to share my struggles past and present to help the world to understand not only me but people who are like me, especially those who have not fared as well. I choose to trust that when I dare to share my struggles, my friends will become allies. I choose to be stigma free.
