Stigma around mental health impacts lives.

By Sarah Barry

Stonehill College News Blog Journalist

Kayla Faulkner’s brother Brendan’s struggle with depression got so bad that he had trouble leaving his room, he stopped eating, and he dropped out of college.

“In his senior year of college things took a turn for the worst. My family did not know until much later when he had to leave school because he couldn’t not handle the pressure,” said Faulkner, a freshman at Bridgewater State.

She said that the stigma surrounding mental health made her brother hesitant to seek help for his anxiety and depression that led to him isolating himself from his friends and family.

While her brother is doing better now, there is still much work that needs to be done to educate people about the seriousness of mental health and illness issues, Faulkner said.

“People are so quick to make jokes. I remember walking down the halls in high school and hearing people pass comments like ‘I’m so depressed’ or ‘I’m going to kill myself’ when all that happened was they got a bad grade. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it. It’s that simple,” said Faulkner, who is a member of a school group working to destigmatize the topic of mental health struggles. 

Her brother is not alone in his fear of speaking up regarding his struggle with mental health.

A cross-sectional study about help-seeking behavior, “Help-seeking Behavior of Jimma University Students with Common Mental Disorders,” was conducted in Ethiopia at Jimma University and published on the publication website PLOS ONE in February 2019.

The study found that 58.4% of students participating in the study confirmed having common mental disorders. Common mental disorders included depression and anxiety. Of those who confirmed, 78.4% said that they sought help. However, only 16.2% asked in a formal sense.

The study also looked at various factors such as socio-demographic characteristics, social characteristics, clinical characteristics, and substance use so that they could be taken into account when performing their studies on common mental disorders. These key contributing factors were tested through the use of various questionnaires.

In recent years, advocacy groups such as the Yellow Tulip Project have formed to help dilute the stigma around mental illness and encourage people to get help when they need it.

The Yellow Tulip Project gets its name from founder Julia Hansen in honor of her two best friends who took their lives. One’s favorite color was yellow and the other’s favorite flower was a tulip.

The Yellow Tulip Project includes youth ambassadors and has events such as the planting of hope gardens. The project, which now boasts chapters nationwide, wants to “smash the stigma” surround mental health problems and bring people hope, said Anna Mullen of Milton, one of Yellow Tulip’s members. 

“One of our new and exciting projects is a photo exhibit entitled ‘I Am More: Facing the Stigma’ and it’s made up of black and white photos of people struggling with mental illness with a description of them. The goal of the exhibit is to have a more open perspective on what mental illness ‘looks like’ since there is not just one mold,” said Mullen.

Both Mullen and the mission of the Yellow Tulip Project place emphasis on the importance of sparking conversation about mental illness.

“A big way we smash the stigma is just by starting conversations about it. We are strong believers in the ripple effect; when one person shares their story of struggle and hope, it inspires another,” Mullen said.

The National Alliance of Mental Illness is an organization which educates people on mental illness and advocates for people living with it, provides statistics on stigma and the battle with mental health.

“Suicide is the second leading cause of death of youths ages 15-24 and the tenth leading cause of death of all Americans,” said the National Alliance of Mental Illness.

The website said what stigma is, why it is a problem, and how it can be cured. It includes a variety of different statistics, definitions, and suggestions for improvement.

"Stigma is when someone, or even you yourself, views a person in a negative way just because they have a mental health condition. Some people describe stigma as a feeling of shame or judgement from someone else. Stigma can even come from an internal place, confusing feeling bad with being bad," said the National Alliance of Mental Illness.

Dorian Traube of the University of Southern California, an expert in many areas including adolescent health and mental health, health prevention with teens, and adolescent risk-taking. said that social media has created new mental health minefields for teenagers to navigate.

“Adolescence is such a vulnerable time period and social media has been a factor impacting students. It makes people feel less inhibited and gives them a false sense of courage that they probably wouldn’t have in person,” Traube said. 

Traube said what is being done and what can be done to end the stigma and hopefully lessen the amount of people suffering from mental health struggles.

“More awareness is definitely being brought about to both parents and teens and the effort in school settings to try and do preventative work has gotten a lot better. The most important thing that can be done is more talk, more coverage about mental health. The more talk there is about mental health, the less of a stigma there is,” said Traube.