I know a firefighter (somewhere in Canada) that attended a traumatic accident scene. He ended up needing some hospital time for his mind.
He went away for a while into a distant hospital so that his own community did not know that he was in. It is hard to enter a psychiatric facility. What will people say?
This was not too many years ago. Have we changed for the better regarding getting help for mental health? I believe in some ways that we have. And in other ways we have only started our community journey.
I believe that we need to be brave to face the challenges of mental illness—as individuals and as communities. Can we accept that we are all on a mental health journey?
There are many nuances of mental health/mental illness. Many people hide their mental illness challenges, sometimes out of survival. We can lose our jobs because of it. We can lose our opportunities for advancement. We have to be careful about who knows.
Can you imagine how hard it is to hide an illness? It takes a lot of energy. It is a challenge to look after ourselves when we are ill. And we have to pretend that everything is okay so that people will not judge us.
Is our community supportive for mental health? Mental Illness is a complex, community problem that requires many solutions. Perhaps we need to surround a mentally ill person with love and flowers and goodness. Discrimination, ignorance, and fear does not serve us.
What about treating human beings with excellence on the subject of mental health? What about our courageous emergency workers and first responders? They run the risk of mind injury serving our community. We need to all grow skill sets to help ourselves and one another. My firefighter friend now promotes the importance of de-briefing.
It is time that we grow compassion for the mentally ill. We are in this together with our veterans, our first responders, our mothers, our brothers, our families and our friends. Each and every one of us is experiencing mental health. It doesn’t matter if we have one or what our diagnoses is, we need to be empowered to work together to look after ourselves and each other.
We can all learn more on the subject. Just imagine a better future for our children and their children regarding mental health. There are many services available in our community and online to get help. Please be brave and reach out. You are worth it.
