Living with mental disease is probably the most irritating struggle I have to deal with every day. I have to take extra medicine. I have to keep track of everything I’m doing. I have to constantly check in with my grandparents, even if I haven’t left the house. I can’t take a nap during the day. What I have to deal with every day is incredibly common with people who have depression and borderline personality disorder. We suffer from a perpetual cloud over our heads because of a specific set of symptoms brought on by our environments, genetics and even abuse. The purpose of my writing this week is to go over what causes these disorders, although personally I see my mental disorders as chronic illnesses.

The first of the two disorders is depression. The more common of the two, you could easily go to a library and find a whole aisle of self-help books handling the disorder. The primary cause for it happens to be genetics. That’s right, depression is a hereditary disease. In this instance, the inability to balance the exchange of sodium and potassium in the nervous system results in individuals who appear to be moping quite a bit. However, they can’t help what they’re expressing because depression is a disease. Depression may also be the result of an unclean or dark environment. When a home is dirty, the individuals living in it often display lethargic behavior that could be curbed through therapy and prescription medications. If someone with the disorder doesn’t recognize and treat their problem, the affected individual will most likely seek out depressants for their temporary stimulant effects. Alcohol is the biggest example. In small amounts, the drug creates a sensation of ease for a depressed individual, very much like heroin for a drug addict. When it wears off, the depressed person often ends up in a worse slump than they already were and could become aggressive.

Borderline personality disorder, which I’ll refer to as BPD, also may result from genes that were passed down generations. Not to be confused with multiple personality disorder, BPD acts as a more schizophrenic form of bipolar disorder. In my family’s case, my grandmother with schizophrenia passed down her mental illness and it manifested as BPD in my mother, myself and possibly at least one of my other siblings. Basically, my grandma was sick and got everyone else sick. Not a fun situation, but that’s how the cookie crumbled. The other main cause, however, is horrible. A lot of folks with BPD end up showing the symptoms of aggression and extreme attachment because they were abused. My mother would beat me and pretend that she didn’t mean to in order to curry favor with me. Because of this behavior, I became belligerent as an adolescent. I also became paranoid, which will never completely go away. I’m always upset that my friends will abandon me because I’m not good enough. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to abuse another person, especially their own child, into a mental disease. But, I digress.

Mental disorders and diseases are an epidemic that the majority of the public would rather not look into. I don't agree with that outlook. It's probably because I happen to have mental disease myself. That's why this week I took the time to tell you about how these two disorders manifest, whether hereditary or otherwise. Next time in this series, we'll look over what to do when you know someone who has either disease and you want to help them.