This morning, a friend of mine informed me that a dear friend of her and her husband, her husband's military buddy, lost his battle in this life. I met this person twice. I enjoyed his company. He was a jovial, outgoing person. I know some things about him, but not much. What few things I do know about him are these: he had a family. He was struggling emotionally. He was a war veteran who saw things in the Middle East that the majority of us civilians cannot even comprehend. He suffered greatly from PTSD. He suffered from substance abuse. This is all I know about him. And yet, my heart is heavy with sadness at the loss of his mortal life.
This blog, Mental Illness: Mental Awareness, isn't just some blog. This blog isn't to puff myself up with pride. This blog is not to win some popularity contest. This blog, at its inception and moving forward, is to bring about awareness, education and understanding about mental illnesses.
There is a chasm in our world. This chasm exists between the balances of mental struggles and the heart wrenching inconsistencies that happen somewhere between logic and passion, the heart and the mind, the cognitive ability to reason and the emotional inability to make sense of this confusing world.
There are so many topics I could choose to write about given the news that has been delivered to me today. Today, this is my message: Mental illness is real. Mental illness is not a scapegoat or an excuse to behave poorly or even abusively. Mental illness is not anything to be afraid of nor ashamed of at any time. Education of mental illness is something that must be taught. Tolerance of mental illness is something that must be acquired. Whether you are the mentally ill person or the supportive caregiver reading this blog YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
We all know the only time we hear about mentally ill patients in the media or in movie productions is to portray their snapping. Their breaking point. Mass shootings, murder-suicides, harmful attacks in homes and in public venues. We are reaching epidemic proportions of mental illness tragedies. The truth of the matter is, mentally ill individuals are much more likely to harm themselves, alone and secretly, verses harming others. The truth of the matter is, most mentally ill individuals are suicidal not homicidal.
According to Australia's Victoria State Government:
"Research has shown that people receiving effective treatment for a mental illness are no more violent or dangerous than the rest of the population. People with a mental illness are more likely to harm themselves – or to be harmed – than they are to hurt other people. A person with schizophrenia is far more likely to die by suicide than they are to harm someone else."So, what do we do? We learn. We educate ourselves. We do not turn away from people who need us. We set boundaries for what we will and will not tolerate. We make the mentally ill individuals accountable for their own actions. (See my last post on Safety Plans). We seek help. We seek treatment for ourselves and the ones we love. We refrain from turning a blind eye to illness that surrounds us. We refrain from being emotionally numb to the mentally ill.
When we are emotionally numb to the mentally ill, the mentally ill search for ways to numb their own pain, their own suffering, their internalized shame as deep as the dark abyss they feel exists in the center of their souls. It is common and frequent for mentally ill individuals to turn to drug addictions and substance abuse as a means to self medicate the wounds we cannot see. We cannot save anyone from themselves. We can only love them. Accept them. Truly try to comfort them during their suffering. We can choose to not be numb toward the people we love. Let me be clear, choosing to not be numb toward the people we love does not translate to the ability of saving the ill person from themselves. The cruel paradigm is that we can do everything we know how to do, make ourselves raw with emotion, efforts and attempts and the mentally ill person you love can still lose their battle. Choosing to not be numb is a hard choice. Choosing to not be numb can hurt and can be frightening. Choosing to not be numb gives us liberation and freedom from what would be regrets of "should have", "would have" and "could have" games that play relentlessly between our ears when we lose someone we love.
Addiction in and of itself is its own category of mental illness. According to USA.Gov's The National Institute on Drug Abuse, drug addiction is a mental illness:
"because addiction changes the brain in fundamental ways, disturbing a person's normal hierarchy of needs and desires and substituting new priorities connected with procuring and using the drug. The resulting compulsive behaviors that override the ability to control impulses despite the consequences are similar to hallmarks of other mental illness."Soon the mentally ill go from one mental illness to two illnesses, to three illnesses and more. The illnesses compound upon one another and the assistance of professional experts is required to help not only the patient but the families as they tread through the muddy, murky unknown future.
I am truly saddened and heartbroken at the loss of this man whom I have only met twice. The loss his family now grapples with as they make funeral arrangements, manage logistics that must be managed and try to come to terms with a loss that happened much too soon at much too young of an age is difficult to bear. His life was spared in a war ravaged country that I personally know little about. His life was lost in the war he fought within himself as a veteran dealing with mental anguish none of us will truly understand. His anguish and torment is labeled as PTSD. His anguish and torment was truly known only to himself. Our eyes never saw what only his eyes saw. My condolences sincerely go out to his family, friends and loved ones.
Here is my invitation to you: As you see posts and articles that I have written on this blog, share them. Comment on them. Subscribe to email notifications. In the left hand margin of Mental Illness: Mental Awareness, there is an option to subscribe by email. I will be the first to tell you that I am not consistent with the timing of my blog posts. Don't rely on a social media shares or posts to alert you that I have published a new article. Social media feeds are unreliable and filtered. Get a notifications in your email so you can share articles with people you think will benefit from the information here. I do not claim to be an expert on all things. I do not claim to know everything about everything. There are posts that I will probably post that may be wrong or off base or could slightly miss the mark. All I know is what I know. I know what I have lived through in my own experiences. I know what I have learned as I have found myself curled into a ball on my bedroom floor unable to get up between the sobs of tears, fear and anxiety that has consumed me. I have learned how to get back up. I have learned how to find strength when I have been at my weakest. When words run dry in your own life experiences, rely on the words here at Mental Illness: Mental Awareness. Rely on the words of understanding, education, compassion and tolerance.
~Elizabeth~
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