For a long time, I didn’t pay much attention to my mental health, or that of others.
I didn’t think badly of it, necessarily, but I sure didn’t understand it. Which is some sort of terrible irony, considering how mental health has played a significant role in my life (and continues to this day).
Mental health, like many other things I’ve spoken of during my time here with the Write Team, carries a terrible prejudice in our country. It wasn’t long ago any symptom of depression, for example, would lead someone (usually a woman) to be put in a sanatorium or asylum. They were thought of as crazy, as someone who had to be incarcerated for the safety of themselves and others.
Can you imagine if we tried to do that now? I have been on antidepressants since March of 2017. When I had my first panic attack, which left me paralyzed at my college apartment, should I have been fitted for a straitjacket? Of course not. I made an appointment with my regular doctor. She talked to me about my symptoms, and by the end of the day, she decided I needed to be medicated.
I won’t lie; at first, I was almost angry at the thought of taking pills, of admitting I had a problem. Why? Because of the bias mental health faces in our country. It’s seen as a weakness, as a problem that’s shameful and pitied. Being able to admit when you have a problem, though, is the farthest thing from a weakness. If anything, it makes you stronger.
But I digress. When I was diagnosed with depression, I had to face my own personal bias. It took a lot of time and self-expression, especially in the written or drawn form. Since I was first diagnosed, I’ve had my ups and downs, as any other human being would have. These past couple years, with COVID, my mental health took a nosedive into the deep end. After some prodding from my mother, I went back to the doctor (which was a struggle in itself because my original doctor left the area and I had to find a new one). He decided I needed something stronger, and after the initial period of waiting for the old meds to swap with the new, I have found myself in a happier place.
But even then, after being medicated for five years and seeing my siblings go through their own mental health dilemmas, I was hesitant. The bias ran so deep in my brain I didn’t want to do any more for my own mental health. I didn’t want to admit I had more problems, that what I was doing wasn’t enough.
It’s not an active choice to have a mental health disability. The same can be said about most, if not all, disabilities human beings can have. I believe that’s the first step we need to accept, to help rid this prejudice once and for all. Who would want to live like that? To be immeasurably sad, inconsolable, suicidal even? Our brains are incredible things, and we still are learning so much about that weird, smooshy mass in our heads. We cannot control every aspect of our brains, as much as we want to. What CAN we control then?
How we perceive others. How we can help others get the help they need. How we can love others, despite their faults. And our own.
Being depressed, having ADD, and any other disability is not something to be ashamed of. It doesn’t mean you’re broken, that something is terribly wrong with the way your brain functions. Every brain functions differently, and taking a pill to help regulate it doesn’t mean you’re weak.
It means you are strong.
- Catie Calderon, a La Salle-Peru native, is a creative writing graduate of Knox College who is hoping to pursue her master’s in social work for the fall of 2023. She resides in Peru with her fiancé, Will, their dog Oakley, and cat Loaf.