I just wanna let you guys know that I fulfilled a big fat dream I’ve had since I was about 14. That’s an almost 10 year old dream that I’ve FINALLY fulfilled.
I saw Poets of the Fall.
Yeah. Anyway, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, did I tell you I finally saw Poets of the Fall?
Let’s begin. P.S I’m like a giddy little girl who finally saw her favourite band ever. (Yeah, don’t talk about HIM unless you want me to cry).
So world mental health day was the other day, and I’m always a bit iffy when it comes to the ‘narrative’ on mental health. Said narrative nowadays is always surrounding the ‘destigmatisation’ of mental illness, and I don’t agree with it. I’ve spoken about this time and time again, I’m always thinking about it, I wrote my dissertation on it;  destigmatising mental illness is a bad thing. I think it’s a horrible, dangerous, erasing thing. Destigmatising mental illness essentially means to make it “normal”, and mental illness is anything BUT normal. The idea is good – make it easier to talk about. But it’s all gone in the wrong direction; making it ‘normal’, making it something that everyone and anyone has, makes it harder for people who are actually suffering to speak up. There is nothing normal about a mental illness, the same way there’s nothing normal about tuberculosis or gangrene.
Social media sites make it even worse. I get that we’re a generation of self depreciating folk. I get it. Teenagers are depressed and this economy makes them want to kill themselves; we’re all anxious and we’re all a mess. But the schizophrenic kid reading all these memes about depression isn’t going to feel comfortable getting help, because even in a world where everyone is mentally ill, they’re still psycho.
I guess I’ve always had this thing about psychotic illnesses being left out of every single narrative on mental health, and therefore the narrative cannot be complete. You can’t just romanticise the mental illnesses that are easier to have and deal with. Don’t fucking romanticise any at all. Anxiety isn’t cute, depression isn’t edgy, bipolar disorder isn’t something you can switch on and off whenever you feel like it. Not in reality, anyway.
So yeah, I once again have a few not-so-little things to say about Mental Health and here they are.
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