Mental disorders are taboo in many cultures and are still frowned upon to this day. Organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illnesses (NAMI) are working to try and normalize and take away the stigma around it. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is available 24 hours a day for people struggling with the thought of not being able to live anymore. People are here and willing to help but people are afraid to talk about their problems because of the shame surrounding the idea of mental troubles. 

People have stigmas around mental health and treatment because of their beliefs and religion, and I can personally testify to this. My state of mind was neglected for 2 years, my father didn’t believe in counseling and treatment for my issues. I was dealing with a lot of stress and other things and I felt like I needed some help to try and stay on top of everything and try to get a grip on myself. My father, a very Christian man, said that “God will cure everything if you just pray”, but I have found out that it is not entirely right. I was conditioned to think that God’s healing touch would cure everything, but what I have learned and believed personally, is that we can use the resources that are here for us and the things we have discovered to our advantage.  My mother tried to help me out with my “stress”, and she looked into a 6-week workshop. I was undermined by that man that claimed himself as a therapist. I was told that I was overreacting and that it was just stress that was making me do that. I was shut down about everything. We had a curriculum that we went by like he was teaching out of a textbook. That hurt me more than it helped me. When I brought up my feelings a few months later my mother talked about going to see him again, I shut that down like he shut me down. After talking to my mother and my friend's mom, who is an actual professional therapist, we decided to go to a different place, and I would actually get help that was professional. My own story is still unfolding, so I don’t entirely know what my ending would be. Because I and still having these problems and I am still trying to take the necessary steps to get everything under control. We need modern solutions to modern problems, and mental health is becoming more of a modern issue because the shaming is coming to an end and we need to do something to try and end the taboo about mental disorders. These things do not go away overnight, nor do they develop overnight. It takes years to try and handle everything and learn how to take care of yourself and your condition. Everyone is different, no one has the same exact textbook condition, every case is special and needs to be identified by a professional. 

There are a lot of ways of things can turn into mental illnesses, bullying and abuse are some of the many ways. Teens who are bullied and abused are more likely to be more suicidal because of the way that they have been conditioned to think. They think that they are not good enough to live up to society and alienate themselves from the idea of life. For example, people apart of the LGBTQ+ are more likely to be suicidal because of the prejudice and discrimination that they are often faced with (LGBTQ+ Suicide Prevention and Information). LGBTQ+ are often told they are wrong in the way they love another person. Because of all of the issues that the community is faced with prejudice around the way that they love is wrong, they are more bullied than a student that would be identified as straight. One person might argue that mental illnesses cannot be developed and you can only be born with it but in reality, this is not always the case. To put it in perspective, babies are not born with cancer but they can be. Not all people are born with a healthy state of mind but because of people's environment and interactions, that can manifest into something more serious than some bad thoughts. 

Something as little as being a different race or not having the most recent clothing can become something huge through the way that others think. Society has an image that everyone feels the need to conform to, specifically men and women’s ideals. Men have a stigma around being able to show feelings, they are taught that you have to be masculine in order to be a man. Women’s generalized standard is that they show too much emotion making them weak, unstable, and crybabies. Male suicides are on the rise because of how toxic male ideals are, they feel like they cannot share their feelings because that is a feminine thing to do. Because of the standard that people feel the need to live up to, it is destroying the way that we think about ourselves and others. This can not only affect our mental state but our physical state too. 

1 out of 5 adults in the U.S. lives with a mental disorder and 1 out of 25 live with a serious mental condition like Bipolar disorder or Schizophrenia. (NAMI Living with a Medical Condition)  Only 4% of the budget in America dedicated to the health system is spent on mental health (Mental Disorders). Mental illnesses and disorders are not a choice for people, they have many causes. They are disorders of brain functions, this is a complex interaction between a person’s genes and their environment. This is a worldwide problem that doesn't need to be a problem. It needs to be normalized because of the fact that it is normal, the things we are dealing with aren’t new topics, just repressed ones.  Mental illness has similar rates of occurrence all across the globe, so this is not just a United States statistic. 

In the United States, we need to make help for these types of issues more available to anyone and everyone. To make a person well, we need to look at all aspects of a person and not just the physical side. We need to realize the fact that we as a nation have an issue, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. In 2015 suicide and self-injury cost the U.S. 69 billion dollars. On average there are 129 suicides per day, and they all could have been prevented by just talking to someone about everything (Suicide Statistics) Just by talking to someone about how I was struggling with my own problems it helped me to think and take action to try and stay on top of everything. It’s not impossible to stop this. North Carolina has a NAMI division, we as a nation and a state need to take action against suicide and we need to organize preventative care like free clinics to just talk.