Mental Illness Awareness Read-A-Long #Mentalong

Hello everyone,

I wanted to make this a video post, but every time I turned the camera on to record I just got lost in my words and couldn't express what I wanted to say properly, so I decided to make this a blog post instead.

This post is going to be about mental health and what the Mental Illness Awareness Read-A-Long (#Mentalong) means to me.

Mental Illness is classified as any mental health disorder that manipulates a person’s thoughts, behavior, and/or mood. There are many types of mental disorders; to name a few there is depression, panic disorders, anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, eating disorders, OCD, Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and many many more. This readalong is about raising awareness of mental illness.

Unlike physical illness that can be seen, mental illness is all within the brain and isn't easy to point out. If you were to see someone with a cast or on crutches you would know immediately that they had been/are hurt/sick and in recovery. Whereas if you see someone who looks sad we tend to brush them off and think “oh they’re just having a bad day, they’ll get over it.” Sometimes it isn't as simple as having a singular bad day. As a society, we are quick to judge and not take the time to understand someone before writing them off. Mental illnesses are a result of chemical imbalances in the brain. Yes, there are medications to help with a lot of psychological disorders, but there is also various types of therapy to help with the mental illness as well.  

As many of you know, I have my BA in psychology. Psychology has always interested me, even if I didn't know it until my late teens. I’ve always been interested in science and the brain but it wasn’t until I took a psychology class my senior year of high school that I really started to think about psychology. It wasn’t until my second semester of college that I changed my major to Psychology. I had started out as photography major but quickly changed my mind to something I was more interested in. Being invested in the subject I was ecstatic when I saw Lieke’s post about wanting to do a read-a-long surrounding mental illness awareness.

I think it is great that there are so many books out there that deal with mental illness in a real way. What I mean by this is that they don’t romanticize mental illness but show a different light to what it means to be living with a psychological problem. The fact that ‘Psychological Thriller’ is a genre of movie and book shows just how far we need to progress with mental illness in books, movies, and TV shows. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good psychological thriller (and may be reading one for this readalong), but most of the time the antagonist has a mental health problem and is looked at in the wrong light. Yes, there are people with mental illness that do fit the types of people that are being portrayed, but they are a very small percentage of people living with a mental illness.  There needs to be more novels and movies that show what it is like for the other people living with a mental illness. Thankfully, these types of entertainment are becoming more prominent in society.

Along the lines of entertainment shedding a bad light on mental illness, the news also sheds a poor light. There are often stories where someone did something wrong or hurt someone where they speculate or later discover that the person responsible has a mental illness. Again, it happens, but these types of stories shouldn’t be able to label everyone with a mental illness as a bad person. Most of the time when someone with a mental illness does something wrong it could have been prevented. With proper treatment, both through therapies and potentially medication, people can live with their mental illness. As a society we should be more aware of these issues and not be so quick to label someone as ‘crazy’ when we don’t know what they may be going through.

I’m very excited to be involved with this read-a-long because I truly believe that there needs to be more awareness about mental illness. Again, this subject fascinates me and I am grateful to be a part of this read-a-long.

Thank you for reading.

-Gina  

P.S. 

If you are interested in joining this Read-a-Long please check out THIS VIDEO for all the information. 

You can also join the GOODREADS GROUP and follow the TWITTER PAGE. 

There will be scheduled reading sprints going on throughout each day on the Twitter page to help you achieve any reading goals you have for yourself this week! 

P.P.S 

Below are just a few of my favorite books that involve mental illness. Now I have not read too many, and thanks to this readalong I am finding so many good books I want to check out, but the ones I have read I have loved!! (Note: I'm not putting authors because some of these I don't remember the author off the top of my head, if you'd like to know leave a comment and I'll look it up!) 

Silver Linings Playbook (currently reading)

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Perks of Being a Wallflower

Looking for Alaska

The Burn Journals

Just Listen

Still Alice

You Don't Know Me

A Child Called "IT"  Trilogy 

I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the ones I've read, but these are the ones that have stuck with me. Again, I'm excited to find more books to read!! :D There are also a TON of great movies out there about mental illness, but I'll save those for another time.