Believe it or not, we’re already in October. Remember a month ago when everyone was buying school supplies and convincing themselves that they were going to get ahead in the course readings? “This is the semester that I start being organized. No more being that student.” Well, I think we’re also far enough into the semester for you to realize that your post-secondary pipe dreams of academic preparedness lacked necessary realism. I’m the first one to admit that my full-time studies are the last thing on my mind, as commitments like this here paper act as time-sponges, soaking up my spare minutes and leaving my course work with a bad case of cotton mouth.
I’m still trying to get a hang of this weekly Lettitor business, juggling my personal interests with that of the readers. I’m only on number four, but I can tell you with confidence that this one has been the hardest for me to write. My past Lettitors haven’t necessarily been laugh factories, but I’d like to get serious and talk about something personal to me: mental illness.
I used to be painfully ignorant of mental illnesses in general and regretfully unsympathetic. I remember back in high school when one of my classmates had a mental breakdown and it was more a point of gossip than anything else. At parties people would say, “Sorry so-and-so can’t be here. He’s a little tied up at the moment.” It guts me, looking back at how we treated the situation behind said individual’s back. I could say something like “Kids will be kids,” but it’s no excuse.
So what caused my mindset to shift? Unfortunately, the same thing that usually has to happen for people to become more understanding: it happened to someone close to me.
For the past few years, a member of my family has been dealing with a mental psychosis. I can’t remember exactly how many times he’s been in and out of the psych ward, but it’s enough that I can’t give a definite answer. It’s devastating to witness someone you’ve known your whole life be committed be forced to undergo treatment that they don’t even think they need. This isn’t something you grow up expecting to face in your young adulthood, but sometimes that pitcher called life likes to throw you a curveball.
Oddly enough, one of the most challenging things for me hasn’t been coping with the situation, but rather the opposite. The rest of my family has remained adamant that no one speak about the individual in question to anyone outside of us. It’s not like I’m new to the concept of a secret—and I thought I’d be okay with keeping the news to myself—but the more time went on, the more I realized that I needed someone to talk to about it, and the more I felt isolated because I wasn’t supposed to discuss it with anyone. Even years later, certain members of my family don’t like to even mention the elephant in the room—or rather, the case of mental illness in the family. It’s frustrating, to say the least.
There isn’t much that we can do about mental illnesses; what we can do is open the topic up to discussion and help to remove the stigma surrounding it. Third-party denial can be as damaging to the individual as the illness itself, and the sooner we accept it for what it is, the sooner we can help them.
So it goes,
Jacey Gibb
Editor-in-chief
