As you may suspect, sometimes being an advocate for something means you might get involved in a heated discussion or controversy. While I don’t want to get into the specifics on here, it is sufficient to note that it is starting to happen in my corner of the world in a particular situation. The details don’t matter. What matters here is how we perceive ourselves and our world, and that is what I want to touch on today.
Now, I write this knowing full well that I am just as guilty of these things, but I want to call them out as a reminder to everyone. I think we all know better, but we also need to work on doing better. This has come up several times over the last few weeks, and it is so important for all of us to know. When it comes to mental illness, we are all in this together. No one is immune from being touched by mental illness. It may not affect you today, but it could at any time. People with mental illness are not a fringe or “out” group. They are all of us. In fact, I suspect we all know a lot of people that may have mental illness and we don’t even know it.
We have to start treating mental illness as a part of all of our lives. We can’t say we want to help people but then fight to make sure they are taken care of somewhere away from where we live. Mentally ill people are a part of us, and they should be able to live and recover around all of us too. We are all human – it doesn’t matter what disorder or disease or symptoms you have – you are with us, and it affects all of us. We can’t hide it away like it is something separate from our society.
My hope is that we agree we are all in this together.