There’s a stigma attached to the words “mental illness” in this society. We throw around words like “crazy” and “imperfect” and “damaged” without much thinking. We make fun of people who admit to having anxiety or depression, and we steer clear of people labeled “bipolar” or “schizophrenic.” This is not because people with mental illness are truly “screwed up” as we’d say. It is because society does not understand mental illness, and instead of trying to understand, we poke fun of and run from it. So let me try to help you understand, yeah?

Mental illness is a sickness of the brain just as much as bronchitis is a sickness of the lungs. Would you ever look at someone with bronchitis and tell them to “just stop coughing and you’ll feel better”? Would you ever look a heart attack victim in the eye and tell them it's “all in your head”? I bet you wouldn’t because you know that’s not how it works. You know that a heart attack is a malfunction of the heart just like bronchitis is a malfunction of the lungs. You know that someone who is sick did not ask to be sick. You know they are not just making it up. Most importantly, you know that they need help.

So why then, do we treat those with mental illness like outcasts? Why do we act like they are problems to be solved, instead of people to be helped? We rush those with broken legs to the hospital and tell those with depression to get over it. We give medicine for those with flu and “stop complaining’s” to those with anxiety. The brain is as much of an organ as are the heart and the lungs. The brain gets malfunctions too sometimes. The brain needs help too.

I simply do not understand why it is so hard to comprehend that mental illness is something that needs to be treated, and that people with these illnesses need to be helped. It’s been proven that there is a difference between a “healthy” brain and a “sick” brain. All you have to do is look at a brain scan. I do not understand why society thinks people with mental illnesses are making it up. Do you think they want to be looked at as crazy? Do you think they want all this negative attention you are giving them? No, they do not. What they want is your help. They want it to be recognized that they are truly sick, and they want something to be done about it. They want to feel better, so we need to stop making them feel worse. We need to bring ourselves to understand that the brain is just like any other organ in the body in that sometimes it needs a little help getting better. We need to start trying to understand mental illness instead of running from it. And to those of you with a mental illness? I promise, it is not all in your head.