There's not enough education about mental illness available. People with mental illness are embarrassed to even say anything about it or tell someone they have it. People have known it for a weakness for somebody when it is so much more. Parents always struggle with the fact their kids have a mental illness, not saying all do cause some parents to handle it very well. But whenever I go on any social media, I see all these posts about sending prayers to someone sick with an illness but never have I seen a post about prayers to someone with a mental illness.
Maybe it's because people don't fully understand it or people are ashamed/shaming mental illness. But instead of doing that, people need to understand it and be more supportive and have more awareness of it. Honestly, people still think that mental illness isn't a real thing, which it very much is so just like all the diseases that we hear about every day.
There can be so many different internal and external environments to explain how or why someone is or acts the way they do. There are so many things that can go on in someone's brain that no one would even know they are thinking about. People have really no idea what's going on unless someone tells them.
This is why people need to be more aware of mental illness, there are so many different ways someone can tell if something is going on, especially if you know that person well. Mental illness can be so hard to understand, especially if someone isn't comfortable with talking about it with other people. So when others don't understand it, they never really know what's going on. They may not understand why you don't want to go out one night and rather stay in by yourself or why you would rather just sleep the day away then deal with everything else going on in life.
But there are so many different ways to help someone, even the small things. You can just let them vent, you listen to them, give them a distraction, reassure them, try to understand how they feel, trying to make them laugh when everything becomes hard, give them some coping strategies, or get them to just relax.
Many different things can trigger someone with mental illness, if there was more education on it more people could help someone if they really need it.
Also, even if they don't need help, you can get a better understanding of someone even if it's a friend or family member or even just someone walking down the street. We never really know what's going on in someone's life or how hard they have it, so before we judge anyone especially someone with a mental illness, try to understand what they're going through and how difficult it is to live in a world where mental illness isn't taken seriously and people just throw the words around like they mean nothing.