According to the latest studies, close to 1 in 4 Americans have some mental illness. Generating awareness is a challenging task! Most of us go about filling a month or a day with a green-colored ribbon. However, do we actually know what this ribbon indicates? With mental health awareness, there is better recognition of a mental health issue, and there is a suitable treatment. And people who suffer from a mental health illness can be people related to us. Hence, early intervention can result in incorrect care. And that will lead to faster recovery.
Perceptions by Martin Polanco
There are many reasons to feel why mental health awareness is essential. The following pointers are helpful to understand the reasons.
- Mental health awareness reduces the stigma attached to mental health issues. For instance, if your dear one has bipolar disorder, you wouldn’t want to tag them as crazy and lock them up. If you do that, it will be out of lack of knowledge that leads to a stigma. However, if you are aware of mental health issues, you would want to find out what resulted in bipolar disorder in the first place and want to know how to correct it. Mental health awareness helps to bring down the level of judgment linked to mental health issues. According to Martin Polanco, it encourages people to look deep into a matter and search for the cause and its solution.
- Awareness can also result in vast improvements for people who are mentally ill. With increased public demand, there can be an attention flow. And this attention can lead to massive changes for mental health patients for the better. For instance, if there is someone who suffers from depression, awareness can look into the situation with added attention and enhancements. It can unlock better treatments and solutions that will help mental health patients.
- Awareness helps to break misconceptions. Today, there are several fallacies about people who are mentally ill. For instance, many people think people diagnosed with clinical depression are lazy or are simply making up symptoms that don’t exist. Some people also think these people to be crazy and that they are unsafe to be around. All these negative labels create unwanted and harsh judgments. The truth is people with mental ailments are human like anyone else. Hence, it is essential to skip all these harsh judgments and focus on the issue at hand. That will help people to arrive at the solution fast and better.
- Mental health awareness helps to increase the level of compassion in people. Today, mental health patients don’t need any harsh opinions or judgment. Instead, they need your love and compassion. When you know about mental health ailments and how they affect an individual, it is natural to have compassion instead of judgment. That way, you can contribute to society better by coming up with a solution to cure someone’s mental health issue.
Through mental health awareness, people can change their notions about mental health issues. They will realize that depression or bipolar disorder are ailments of the mind that require medical attention and therapy.