My story of discovering the stigma around mental health
By: Uzma Ferdous
TW: Mental health illnesses, etc.
As a wide-eyed, outgoing youngster in elementary school, I was ecstatic to attend high school. I began planning the clubs I would join, imagining the people I would befriend, and formulating ambitious expectations for my high school experience. However, as I entered the large building filled with thousands of kids just like me, my previous expectations quickly disappeared. I was stunned and I slowly noticed that my sociable personality became a reserved and shy one. With this change, my mental health deteriorated and I began spiraling into a world of pessimism, anxiety, and self-loathing behaviour.
My issues became physical, with sweating and terrible panic attacks that made it difficult to do the things I loved like socializing and joining clubs. Then, my mother and I decided to visit our family doctor and finally understand what was truly going on with me. I explained all of my symptoms, ranging from difficulty of breathing to emotional exhaustion. My mother was by my side supporting me and gave her two cents about my symptoms. “Maybe this is the moment I get healed”, I thought to myself.
Suddenly, the doctor looks at me and says that my problems will go away if I simply “stop stressing”. He tells me to “be strong” and “stop worrying” and soon opens the door to let us out. The doctor left me with no options or ways to help alleviate my problems, while belittling my experiences with his ‘diagnosis’. After that incident, I felt hopeless.
My relatives, who were aware of my mental health struggles, also treated me in a disrespectful manner. I received dirty looks and backhanded comments on my mental well-being. It seemed as if my mental health issues somehow made me ‘weak’ and my anxiety and depression somehow made me ‘crazy’. It angered me that many of those in the South Asian community still believe that mental health issues are not valid human feelings. Rather, those struggling with these issues tend to become outcasts and are looked down on for the problems they face. I was taught that I should keep my mouth shut, since the main concern was “What will people say” when they hear about my ‘weaknesses’.
In Grade 11, I finally decided to seek help from a therapist. While I had imagined that the experience would be a terrible and daunting one, I soon realized that therapy guided me to the right path. Through introspection and positive reinforcement, the highly trained and kind individuals at these mental health facilities allowed me to regain confidence and develop new coping mechanisms. With the help and advice from my therapist, I felt like myself again. Even though I still had panic attacks and moments of depressive behaviour, I now knew how to cope with it. Yet, it was not all smooth sailing from here.
I noticed that while therapy was infinitely beneficial to myself, it was still looked down on, especially by those in my South Asian culture. I was never shy about my journey, and many relatives of mine seemed to have some disdain for the help I received. To them, therapy was not for everyone; it was for the ‘crazy’ ones. Not only was there a clear stigma around mental health issues, but also getting the necessary support for those issues as well. I learned to brush off these notions and realized that the stigma around mental health must be addressed directly in my community. I openly spoke about my problems and encouraged all of those around me to seek help if they believe it’s needed. Now, mental health awareness is something I am very passionate about and I hope that the stigma around having illnesses or getting help for them soon disappears.