Don't ignore the signs, even if everyone else is

Illustration by Kaitlin Gould

You’re coming up on your fourth week of being sad and waiting for it to pass. It hasn’t. Clinical terms and diagnosis scare you, but you’re not really feeling like yourself anymore.

Stop doubting that gut feeling that is telling you something is wrong. Even if it waivers, it still lingers in the back of your mind.

Your mental health should always be a priority that reigns superior to anything else, because you’re worth checking in with yourself every now and again.

What could be stifling you may feel like depression. You can feel your mood changing abruptly from light to intense in nature or think that you’re losing your willpower to complete everyday tasks. Look into it.

Even if none of your friends realize that your spirit isn’t as bright and easygoing, you notice it and they’re probably not your real friends, unless you’re successful in masking the things that are troubling you.

This makes it more critical for you to seek help because you’re the only one aware that something is wrong.

Depression, social anxiety, addiction and hoarding walk into a bar. They come to the conclusion that they all share a commonality in mental health-related illnesses and thrive off of one thing — isolation.

Warning: loneliness can be a trigger of all four ailments above, according to research in Psychology Today.

Sue Lindenbusch, the vice president of Wellmont Health Systems in Tennessee, oversees the mental health program. She calls those who experience mental health issues the “invisible population.”

“We ignore them until we can’t,” Lindenbusch an interview with the Bristol Herald Courier.

Should you not seek the help yourself, you will be ignored. Millennials and ages below tend to be seen as attention-seeking, self-absorbed and over sensitive. That shouldn’t hinder you from going to the doctor, therapist or even taking a day off to process what you’re experiencing.

“Anxiety and depression are markedly higher than they were in earlier eras,” according to Psychology Today.

Thomas Curran and Andrew P Hill, two authors at York St John University, published an article that leads to a millennial mental health update in The Guardian.

They believe that [millennials] are “overburdened with a perfectionist streak” which can lead to stress and a myriad of other health issues.

This is incredibly true because we are in a generation that relentlessly seeks validation from others.

How many likes can I get on this picture? Which feature is best accentuated or hidden with this Snapchat filter?

Even if you aren’t a millennial, you can be burdened with a mental health illness.

I think the people born around the age of baby boomers, anyone who was given birth to around the 1950s to 1960s, are culprits of ignoring the signs of mental illness. This is a group of people where I have seen their pride kill them.

From my experience, I have discovered that some of these individuals will do everything in their power to avoid going to the doctor for physical health issues that can be fatal.

They’re especially not going to go to a therapist just because they feel a little sadder than normal. Most likely, they will associate that with getting older in age and will laugh at the thought of something like therapy.

No one is exempt from disorders of the mind, regardless of how old you are or how strong you are. Don’t ignore when your body or mind tries to tell you that your mental health may be at risk.

In the words of Lindenbusch, “We need to do better ... Quite frankly, it’s hard to do much worse.”

This article was originally published in The Lumberjack Newspaper and on Jackcentral.org