This is a petition born of the fact that May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Given that that IS what it is called, mental HEALTH, we are seeking to dispel the stigma that is present in the labeling of persons struggling with general depression, anxiety, bipolar issues, etc as SICK or ILL. Those words merely continue to cripple people, make them feel hopeless, that there is something wrong with them, and they will never be healed. HEALING is key and is ABSOLUTELY possible. Unfortunately, a large majority of persons with say, bipolar, are told they will have to be on medications for the rest of their lives and will never recover. A person is NOT BORN this way, and there is NO good reason at all for a person to DIE this way.
People are not MENTALLY ILL, they are EMOTIONALLY WOUNDED. The first step towards ending the stigma towards the mentally ill, is to stop calling yourself mentally ill, and instead refer to yourself as EMOTIONALLY WOUNDED. It's not the mind, it's the heart being unaffirmed and thus its effects on the mind.
The term “depression” is also profoundly WIDELY overused, making the experience to seem a huge hurtle that one can never recover from. It illicits less a sympathetic response from people when you say “i am depressed” as opposed to saying “i feel deeply sad”. The term depression itself then is nothing more than a moneymaker for pharmaceuticals
The affliction on the mind is caused by the heart, which is the first thing to be inflicted upon. And so, SICK is a term for PHYSICALITY. SICK should not be a term for mind and heart problems, because don't you see what it leads to? It leads to people thinking you are deranged, inadequate, etc. SICK should again, be reserved for the physical. I am not sick, I am just hurting.
Does hurting mean you are sick? If I fall into a depression because my mother died, does that now make me "sick"?
True mental illness would involve a person with actual brain damage. I hope you will join me in this effort to aid not only those who don't struggle as much, but those who ARE in the thick of it, to know that they are not "sick in the head". The person who chooses evil, who kills another, is sick, but their problem too, is rooted in the heart. There are just varying levels to which wounds of the heart can lead to.
Rarely does anyone prescribed psychiatric medications know the full scope of what they are entering into, the long-term effects of these drugs, and so on. People are prescribed them, told that this is really their only and last resort, and thus are not agreeing in full freedom. Doctors themselves often do not know the effects. Sadly, long-term use of such medications can often cause TRUE brain damage, and thus mental illness.
