The Stigma of Mental Illness

Photo by Victoria Volkova on Unsplash

I want to talk about the stigma of mental illness. It is something that has affected my life dramatically, and something that I still find myself trying to navigate. In some ways, mental illness reminds me of addiction. There are functioning addicts — like my father. And there are people whose addictions take them into the darkest versions of themselves — like my brother. Mental illness, depending on the type and severity, has the same sort of scale.