They say: "We need to have a discussion about mental illness" - OK, ready?

[ck4829]

Stop enabling mental illness to take hold in a person's life, there are so many things in this country that allow for a mental illness to flourish inside a person's mind, that disincentivizes a person from seeking treatment, and even exacerbates symptoms.

Those are the things we should talk about.

Mental illness is not a sign of sin or a personal failing.

Don't shame people who seek treatment, don't tell them to tough it out.

If you think someone is mentally ill, talk to them about it, tell them there is no shame in seeking treatment.

There is no script for mental illness, no appropriate way for them to act vs everyone else. A depressed person can still smile sometimes. There is no right or wrong way to experience and show grief or anxiety.

Stop linking traits you personally find disagreeable as mental illness. Being gay is not a mental illness, being transgender is not a mental illness, liberalism is not a mental illness, dyeing your hair blue is not a mental illness, etc.

Maybe it's time to stop assigning worth/value to people. Not worth enough to treat? Not good enough? Not valuable enough? But they still have 'point value' right?

It's time for everything to stop being a war on something. War on terror, war on cows (if you talk about the environmental damage industrial beef farming does for some reason), war on drugs, say "happy holidays" and that is apparently a war on Christmas. NO WONDER some of these men think they are living in Call of Duty.

We need to talk about money and the profit motive. Mental illness wrecks your life, the cost and effort associated with treating it can also wreck your life because it is so expensive. Mental illness doesn't mean stupid, guess what the path of least resistance is for not just the poor but even the middle class too? Not treating it. That needs to change.

And stop with this "crisis actor", "body double", "secret clone", "lizard-people" stuff, Qs. Those are REAL people with real bodies, minds, souls, identities, etc.