don’t you think mental health issues should be taught as a part of high school health class?
LOL, i know, trying to make like there is a prayer of high school health classes being reformed into something useful and beneficial. but while we’re dreaming! shouldn’t there be a unit on mental health? or at the very least, depression?
because first off, maybe then some depressed kids would know to get help. probably not all of them, since part of depression is being convinced that everything you are feeling is 100% based in actual truth and fact even when confronted with directly contradictory evidence. but maybe some! which is enough reason by itself to do it. or maybe in the future, they’d remember, and be like, “oh i should get this checked out.”
BUT ALSO. then, maybe there would be fewer situations where people who had never been depressed are like, “well i get that you’re depressed but can’t you just DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT???” or even worse who are like “whatever you’re just being lazy, it’s all in your head!”
i mean, i don’t think it’s really possible to understand depression if you haven’t lived it. i think it’s tempting you think you can, because you’ve read novels by or about depressed people (cough, catcher in the rye, cough) and related to them, deeply, but i don’t think you can know what it is like to actually live INSIDE those novels nearly 24/7 for a really long period of time; i don’t think you can understand how wide a gap there is between “i relate to the feelings expressed therein” and “this describes my entire life for an extended period of time.” which of course doesn’t even get into “the book is okay but why doesn’t the main character just cheer up? what does he [it’s usually a he, unless maybe you’re reading the bell jar] have to be so bummed about?” which like, it’s weirdly hard, in english class, to be like, “uh, i think this person, if i’m armchair-diagnosing fictional characters, may have been suffering from mental illness,” because it’s kind of mundane, i guess, as far as analysis goes. like, “why does he break down? because his neurochemistry was such that he just couldn’t do anything else” is not much of an essay topic, really.
BUT ANYWAY. so then there are all these people who think that because they have been sad in their lives, they a) understand, more or less, depression and b) have some kind of helpful advice to give to people who have been depressed. also, they do not understand that bad advice from them is even worse than bad advice from people who have been depressed. like if a person i know has been depressed is like, “for me this was a helpful thing,” and i’m like, “this is not helpful for me,” no biggie, really, and it was nice of them to try to help. but if a person who HASN’T been depressed is like “when i am sad, i go jogging,” i am like FUCK. OFF. ASSHOLE. (well, not now, i’m doing mentally health wise okay these days. but sometimes in the past.)
and while i do think you can’t understand it if you haven’t been there, i feel like it might not be a total waste of time to introduce people, early, to that fact. to be like: “depression is a thing. a real thing, even. if you don’t have it and never have, you don’t know what the fuck it’s like. so if you ever feel like giving a depressed person some helpful advice based on that time you were sad, or if you feel like maybe it would be helpful for everyone involved if you gave the depressed person a good talking-to about how they should just try harder to get their shit together already, please remember that time you were sixteen and your health teacher told you, preemptively, to SHUT THE FUCK UP.” and thus we spare thousands of future depressed people the agony of not so much having their friends not understand them as having their friends THINK they understand them when, actually, they don’t and can’t.
i mean, whatever, like teenagers listen in health class. but, you know. in theory, i feel like this is a good plan.
