Why mental health awareness is essential | Maansi Masupatri | TEDxYouth@ISE (Transcript)

When I was young, I was never told such thing called mental health existed. I was never told to take care of it or prioritize it. And even to this day, people tell me, oh you're at that stage of life where you're gonna have to deal with stress more just calm down and breathe. Wow would you look at that I'm curating. But here's the thing, about a year and a half ago from a personal project, I chose to do psychological disorders in adolescence.

Personal project is when I be makes us do a project because they hate us and in this project we get to choose our topic and choose a product for the topic and write a report on it. And the topic I chose was like I said psychological disorders and the product I made was a dollhouse.

Now I'm not winsome mango but I tried it and well you see there are five dolls in the dollhouse, but these all represent just one person going through borderline personality disorder. And it wasn't just a disorder that was…. that that represented. it also isn't all the other things that came along with it. The fact that the character the doll represented had insomnia binge eating disorder was a self-harm activist and although and like I said there are five different dolls but this is just five stages and in the end I showed that it could either lead to death or just a better life. Now, there was a particular reason I wanted to do that and it had to do with some people in my life and particularly one whose experience resonated with me.

A friend of mine let's name them Laura had severe depression and had been… had a lot of anxiety attacks and later on she did a get disordered, get diagnosed by a psychiatrist with a clinical depression and panic disorder. But you see time leading up to that nobody recognized it. She tried reaching out but it was really hard for her to and so she decided to put herself out of  her misery and she attempted suicide. Fortunately though, she did survive but after that things got better. she… she got help medically but what you need to understand is that not everything in her life didn't magically start being better. She didn't feel calmer, she didn't feel happier. What it just did was it, she asked for help and she reached out. But one more thing I need to tell you guys before I continue is that I've never met Laura in real life. She was an Internet friend and of course we're the Millennials so that's how things work these days. We’re Facebook friends, we have friends all over the world and we never met them and that's who she was.

And I hope you found the two significant things that were wrong in the situation. One she felt like she can ask for help until she harmed herself only then did she feel like it was legitimate and serious enough of an issue to speak to others off. And two she felt more easier, she felt it was more easier to talk to a stranger which was me at the time than to her own parents. Doesn't that strike you as something wrong and this whole situation reminds me of one, what a TEDTalk member said about depression. His name was Kevin Bill and he said if you ever break your arm and you have a cast, everyone runs towards you to sign it but if you say you have depression they run the other way and that essentially sums up what's how society perceives mental health.

You see major depression is one of be for men before biggest mental disorders that are, that …that for mental disorders…. that that's around the world and that's the diagnose the most however, in the psychology and psychiatry field it's said to be one of the best documented disorders yet. But to the people out of the field like us, the society, it's often misunderstood a lot.  If I go up to somebody in this and I tell them I'm having a depressive episode. As a good friend, they might or a good family member they might look up the symptoms to try help me. But here's where the problem lies, you can apply general symptoms you see for depression and apply to every case because there were different severity levels, there are different types of depression. And if you take it out of context, it's not just depression, it applies to every mental illness and what you need to understand is that not recognizing mental illnesses as a legitimate issue can be very fatal. As of now, the suicide rates are just going up and 5,000 approximately 5,000. There are more people in between the age ranges of 12 to 18 attempt suicide every day in the United States. That's about a million every year and only in those age ranges and United States. Can you imagine the world? Can imagine a third world country in  which medicine hasn't developed that much yet and especially for mental health. See if Laura hadn't been constantly being told that other people have a worse or it's just hormonal changes, see that's perhaps the most infuriating myth hormonal changes in adolescence. It may be so in few cases but tell me does it make it any less life-threatening if somebody sits in their room every single day wondering why they're never happy and you …what you need to understand is that when one in ten adolescents are diagnosed with one mental disorder every year.  And that's one in ten and that to one mental disorder which means like I said in for my personal project, you've learned that many mental illnesses can co-occur with each other and and Laura wouldn't have been in a torn state of mind if people haven't told her. Other people have it worse and it's okay you know, it'll get better you might if she got in professional help before,  but why take it to that stage.

And what most people… what when they say other people how worse they're referring to people in Africa who don't get food and that's completely out of context and even then, yes those are issues that need to be… that they need to be focused on but if someone you saying I have pain recognized me, why do we compare it to others and that's like saying oh yeah stage two cancer is worse than stage one. Yeah but cancer is  cancer. And so beauty have changed the theme of old event or the entire event and so I think maybe there is change that can be made by everybody and if society and that is both you and me can start being a little more open-minded about the fact that mental illnesses can come in every age, gender or race, culture. It doesn't matter, we're all humans right in the end, then it would make it easier for people dealing with it.

A lot of times, the social stigma is harder to deal with  than the disorder itself but do not keep in mind that it's only the social stigma that's affecting the person so the mental illness…. So what I'm trying to say is that maybe it's not possible for us to have a quick to get rid of our quick negative impulse but maybe if we could just be not quick to compare and just listen to what the other person is trying to do when they're reaching out for help, it will help everybody in the society and ourselves as a person thank you

[Applause]

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