1/3 HAPPY WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY!
So I'm going to crawl out of my Hermitage and say some stuff. Of course I am.
Sadly (no pun intended), there seems to be a common misconception; that “I have a mental illness” equals “I have depression”.
There are SO many different forms of mental illness, and there is so much stigma and misunderstanding still attached to it, that those who have "A" mental illness will often say just that (“I have A mental illness”) because it's at least fairly safe to say that - even if it is just to cut off the conversation. One can usually comfortably declare what type of diabetes you have, and people will have some idea of determining the challenges each diabetes type poses; even if it has seemed to have bizarrely taken on the “good” diabetes / “bad” diabetes set of monikers! We're also making great strides in being able to more comfortably share what kind of cancer we may be battling, and those told can then mentally make a "potential challenges assessment" -rightly or wrongly- on such information (although there are still some cancers that sadly still suffer from an "ew-factor" stigma - but many are now more comfortable to ask, "What are you tackling?" when told "I have cancer".)
However, to say "I suffer from mental illness", usually shuts the conversation down. It seems that, with that disclosure - in my experience at least - most people internally go for the safe bet of "they're probably saying they're depressed." I say "safe bet" because as a frame of reference, most people have been “sad”, even “very sad”, at some point in their life, and they can recognise that, then mentally bump that feeling up a bit, and say to themselves, “My friend has depression. They seem 'sad' most of the time, and they say they have a mental illness, therefore, they have 'depression'. I've been 'sad' myself, so I have an inkling of what they're going through. I have a frame of reference!” Sadly, “depression”, indeed a mental illness in and of itself, is often a by-product of another mental illness, of which unless you have suffered it yourself, you have not the slightest frame of reference that comes even close. It then becomes more a comparison of “I have a ‘mental illness’” to “I fractured a ‘bone’”: I have personally suffered a fractured toe, so I'm well equipped to know what living with a fractured skull, or broken hip MUST be like!" This, of course, is ludicrous. But "I suffer from mental illness" is a two edged sword, again because of stigma. It is still way "safer" to retain a friend, or a job, or a relationship, to have someone equate “I have a mental illness” to “okay, they have ‘Eeyore syndrome’”, than to come out with, “I suffer from Schizophrenia” and have people run for the hills with their Hollywood interpretation of what “THAT” means. OCD is another much maligned and misinterpreted form of mental illness, where, again, it's “safer” to avoid the distorted world-view, and use the catch-all phrase of “I suffer from mental illness”.
I do, indeed, suffer from “chronic depression”; in my case it is
