While I was sitting in on a cognitive behavior therapy group, for my mental health clinical, the discussion was about rumination. Rumination is defined as many things. Dwelling on difficulties and things which distress us, repeatedly thinking about events from our past, becoming preoccupied with something and not being able to get it out of your mind, and a learnt strategy for trying to deal with our problems. The discussion then went further, saying rumination can lead to a resolution of an issue or it can lead us to focus on everything negative, and eventually leading to distress and depression.

Now, as I’m sitting there I’m thinking to myself how grateful I was to have sat in that group because I realized I myself am in rumination and realizing the patterns of my behavior has allowed me to refocus my thoughts. But, telling you how I realized that isn’t the point of this article.

When we think of mental health, what do we visualize? I know for me, before this clinical the first thing that always came to my mind was dark and crazy. The media tends to portray anything-mental health wise to the upmost extreme cases. People so heavily medicated that they’re like zombies, scratching on walls of padded rooms, matted hair, dirty clothes. So, of course, many others, and myself were apprehensive about going and unsure of what to expect, but not expecting anything good. Even two mental health clinical days later I’m here telling you everything portrayed by the media and stigmatized by society isn’t true.

I think as a country who holds such a tight grasp onto our stigmas towards mental illnesses, we have a habit of pointing fingers and blaming. We see a homeless person and we assume it’s because they don’t try to find a job. We see someone depressed and we assume they don’t get out of bed because they’re lazy. We see someone with delusions or hallucinations and automatically label them as “crazy” and turn our backs to them. It is so easy to sit back and tell someone they aren’t doing or trying hard enough. I’ve done it; I’m just as guilty as anyone else. But the truth is, mental illness is not a choice. Having a chemical imbalance in your brain is not a choice. Being abandoned or neglected by the people who should always be there for you is not a choice. Being mentally, physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by the people who are meant to protect you is not a choice. All the people in our country with mental illness didn’t get to choose, they got the cards they were dealt. It’s then my duty and my ethical and moral responsibility to now not assume or label those with mental illnesses and instead listen to the stories, the pain, the fear, the loneliness, the anger, the hurt.

My first day we were interviewing a patient, who to say for the least has had a rough life. But they talked about it as if they were having any casual conversation. By the end of the interview I was holding back tears and kept thinking that if I had gone through even a fraction of what they had, I would be in the mental health unit as well. Something I would consider horrific and traumatizing became their norm at such a young age that they couldn’t do anything but accept it.

This clinical has opened my eyes to so many things. The lack of support and stigma towards mental illnesses, the lack of resources for those with little to no money, but most of all I learned a lot about myself. Before this clinical I had a bias towards mental illness. Before this I turned my back a lot to mental illnesses. Not because I didn’t care, but because of my lack of knowledge. A sad fact about our society is we tend to run away from things or people we don’t understand or that push us outside of our comfort zone. I strongly believe everyone should have to volunteer in a mental health unit in middle or high school to teach and allow them the resources and knowledge to understand mental illnesses to become empathetic.

From all of this, what is to be taken away is we can’t control how others see mental illnesses, but we can control how we do. Educate yourself, help educate others, and then hopefully one day, mental illness can be a thing we will say used to be a stigma but no longer is.