Media Room

Recovery 101

I’ve had some interesting conversations this week, but one of my favorites would probably be a discussion I had pertaining to the theory society has set around what it means to be “mentally ill” these days. If you really think about it, the term mental illness only serves to stigmatize and cause separation between people. For example, if I were to let’s say – get into a traumatic car accident and require an extensive amount of rehabilitation, lose my job because of it, get overwhelmingly sad because I am now forced to have other people take care of me, etc, the only way I am going to get better is to get into the mindset of recovery. Similar to this, those who are labeled with many mental illnesses simply struggle on the path to adulthood. Getting our life on the right track and figuring out what you want to do is extremely difficult, and it requires skills that not everyone has at certain times in their lives. In my personal experience, I was labeled with psychiatric diagnoses at an early age and thought that I had to conform to what society and others dictated I had to do because of my labels, but that isn’t the case at all. Just like that earlier example of the once “normal” person who just happened to get into a car accident one day, a person who has been labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis has to go through the same process of recovery in order to achieve their wellness. No one is different than any other, and no individual is immune to having to go through the process. Yes, for some it may be harder than for others, but it is still attainable. So, the question still remains- why stigmatize and signal out one type of recovery versus another???

How do you guys feel about this concept?