Oct 03 2008
Mental Health Humor: Why Should You Attend Local Support Group Meetings?
Mental Health Humor: Why Should You Attend Local Support Group Meetings?
Are you suffering form Depression or Bipolar disorder or some other type of mental disorder? Are you doing what you can to find balance but just can’t seem to find that balance in life that you once had? Has a label of a mental illness been part of you recent diagnosis?
You do not have to face this condition alone, your illness is not who you really are rather just something you have to live with.. Having caring people around you is important for everyone. When you have depression or a mood disorder, it’s even more important. We are sadly 15% more likely to take our own lives. Take Joyce, in an e-mail just last week, she made a statement about living with a mood that touched a nerve with me, she said:
“This illness as far as I am concerned is worse than cancer. At least with cancer you can be understood, you can be kind to others and at least die with a little dignity. I would RATHER HAVE cancer. This illness affects everyone around us even though much of the times the sick ones are not rational enough to understand this. This illness is capable of destroying YOU. You can’t let that happen.”.. As told by Joyce after another attempt to take her own life.
Joyce later admitted having problems with her medication along with feelings of no purpose; no meaning to her life. This was the main cause that she took such extreme measures. She regrets here actions but knows with out help the next time she might succeed.
That is where can help, whether you are newly diagnosed or a long time veteran. As a group, we have more experience with mood disorders than anyone in the medical field. How? Because we live with it! The information is more valuable than gold, we may carry with us the key to unlocking the hardest questions to answer when dealing with depression or bipolar. How can you live a normal live again? It may be hard to believe but it is possible.
In the group, we are all volunteers not therapist. We hold no medical degree, we have no real schooling but we do have experience from the school of hard knocks our lives are our degrees. By sharing them, we can help others deal with their issues. In the groups, we share information about your condition and its treatment. Listen without judging or criticizing. Empathize with your problems and experiences. Provide opportunities for fun activities and social interaction and add meaning back to your life.
If you believe and feel like Joyce that there is no meaning to your life and you attempt and succeed in taking that extreme step, not only will it effect your friends and family but you may be taking with you the key that could unlock so much for so many who are suffering just like you did. You have an obligation, a purpose, to use your life’s experience to help others. That goes for any who think they are beyond a group setting. Here is a really check, you will never be healed! We will live the rest of our lives with this illness, but we will own it. It will not own us anymore, not again. We will use it like it used us, but we will do good. We will help others who suffer, find the help they need.
this a cartoon I post a while back, it just seemed to fit this post…
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Chato B. Stewart
Mental Health Advocate - Cartoonist - and a few other things!
http://www.mentalhealthhumor.com
“Using Humor to Heal and Educate with badly drawn cartoons.”
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