Something that we still struggle with as a society is still talking about mental health. When someone says that they are struggling mentally, we was people have made it very easy to disparage that person and think of them as weak. This is heavily rooted in the history of medicine. In the 1950s, if you were someone who was having mental health issues you were labeled as defective or broken and rushed off to insane asylum. If that is not what happened, then you could have been treated with electroshock therapy, or both could have happened to you.
Simone Biles is the best olympic athlete, not just the best gymnast I have ever seen. She does things that look like she turned a cheat code on for her life, she is just incredible. Simone Biles is also still just a human being. For those that don’t know or have not been paying attention to the Olympics, Simone Biles had to pull out of the Team Gymnastics Final because of what we learned later was a mental health issue. My first experience with mental health was when I was younger, around 10 or 11. It was back when my older brother was diagnosed with having OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) while he was a freshman at the University of Alabama. I was still in elementary school and waiting for my mom to come pick me up. My principal at the time told me that she was running late because something happened with my brother and was on her way to come and get me. I remember getting into the car and seeing my brother and him looking fine and not understanding there was anything wrong. We then started to go to group therapy as a family to kind of help us all through he change that had occurred with my brother. One of the reasons I believe that humans have such a hard time understanding mental health is because it mostly is something you can not see. When we see someone get hurt or have an illness, it is something that we can see “Oh this person is struggling or not feeling well”. Mental health is so much harder to see if the person that is feeling it is not open about what’s wrong. There are definitely days were I smile on the outside, but inside of my brain I am constantly thinking about what I am doing , what am I not doing, worried about this thing even if I have no control over it.
That is why I am trying to be more open about my own personal mental health. It is okay to not be okay, and there are days where I will be sitting on the couch, and then a thought hits me about how I am 27, or how I am working at a retail store with a college degree that I don’t use, or even looking at my friends are having families and feeling left behind. I don’t necessarily believe all of those things but sometimes even the most stray of thoughts can come into my head and knock my whole world off of balance.
To me seeing Simone Biles be so open about her mental health and deciding that for what was best for the team was her stepping aside instead of trying to push through and “act tough”. Seeing someone who from the outside looks like they have it all figured out and has achieved so many great things in their life still have to deal with this, and deal with it on possible the biggest stage when everyone is watching is so brave. None of us are immune to the effects of what anxiety can do to you. Simone Biles is not immune, neither are Demar DeRozan and Kevin Love who are two NBA All-Stars. Both of them have been open about depression and anxiety. DeRozan talked to the The Toronto Star about his fight with depression
“It’s one of them things that no matter how indestructible we look like we are, we’re all human at the end of the day.
Kevin Love has talked about how seeing that inspired him to talk about his anxiety and to be more open about his mental health. Seeing Demar DeRozan talk about his own mental health, inspired Love to write an article for The Players’ Tribune: “Everyone is going through something that we can’t see. The thing is, because we can’t see it, we don’t know who’s going through what and we don’t know when and we don’t always know why. Mental health is an invisible thing, but it touches all of us at some point or another. It’s part of life.” Mental health is so important and it should be taken seriously. Having mental health issues, whether it is anxiety, depression or something else does not make you weak. Its also something that is a constant battle, and something you can have even if everything in your life on the outside looks great. Having a great support system that understands this can really help. If you need any help, NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) is a great resource of that. It is okay to not be okay.
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