End The Stigma: Mental Illness
Donation protected
The United States views mental illness through two extremely unfortunate lenses: morbid curiosity when someone in a position of fame or influence chooses to take their own life, or anger and disdain when someone struggling through some clearly dark time takes it out publicly killing, injuring others and themselves fatally.
I experience mental illness as a daily fight, a nightly accomplishment, and an overall personal achievement.
I have recently felt a strong desire to change the conversation surrounding mental illness completely. I want to open a new window, break down different doors.
We (myself and a film crew) will spend the next 365 days traveling across the country visiting universities, sitting in on psych classes, meeting people from all walks of life, sleeping in their homes, participating in their routines, understanding their illness, checking in on government funded mental health organizations, and many other actions and process that will help us change the landscape of mental health in this country.
We want to understand. We need to know. We must acknowledge. We are mental illness.
It is my belief that we are all mental illness. Whether it be a friend, a relative, a neighbor, someone at church, your child's teacher, the lady you always see walking her dog. Mental illness isn't discerning. It does not discriminate. Mental illness impacts each and every one of us.
I have known that I was different my entire life. Since the age of fourteen I have been treated on and off for that difference. My first hospitalization was hush hush and very traumatic for me. Since college there has been a name for that difference. Since my divorce society has started whispering about that difference. And slowly I have heard more and more. At some point I started to acknowledge my differences.
In 2012 my difference finally broke me in a way I could not understand and suicide entered the picture as a way out. I started to talk. Since then I have not stopped talking and now, I have been called on to use my voice, my genuine concern and care for others, my creativity, my passion and my desire to see change in our society to make a difference.
I want to demonstrate to society that we as patients fighting mental illness are not our diagnosis but rather each of us, the American populace as a whole on some level are mental illness at its core. We can increase awareness, break through the stigma, and reduce the prevalence of the 8th leading cause of death in the United States, suicide.
I experience mental illness as a daily fight, a nightly accomplishment, and an overall personal achievement.
I have recently felt a strong desire to change the conversation surrounding mental illness completely. I want to open a new window, break down different doors.
We (myself and a film crew) will spend the next 365 days traveling across the country visiting universities, sitting in on psych classes, meeting people from all walks of life, sleeping in their homes, participating in their routines, understanding their illness, checking in on government funded mental health organizations, and many other actions and process that will help us change the landscape of mental health in this country.
We want to understand. We need to know. We must acknowledge. We are mental illness.
It is my belief that we are all mental illness. Whether it be a friend, a relative, a neighbor, someone at church, your child's teacher, the lady you always see walking her dog. Mental illness isn't discerning. It does not discriminate. Mental illness impacts each and every one of us.
I have known that I was different my entire life. Since the age of fourteen I have been treated on and off for that difference. My first hospitalization was hush hush and very traumatic for me. Since college there has been a name for that difference. Since my divorce society has started whispering about that difference. And slowly I have heard more and more. At some point I started to acknowledge my differences.
In 2012 my difference finally broke me in a way I could not understand and suicide entered the picture as a way out. I started to talk. Since then I have not stopped talking and now, I have been called on to use my voice, my genuine concern and care for others, my creativity, my passion and my desire to see change in our society to make a difference.
I want to demonstrate to society that we as patients fighting mental illness are not our diagnosis but rather each of us, the American populace as a whole on some level are mental illness at its core. We can increase awareness, break through the stigma, and reduce the prevalence of the 8th leading cause of death in the United States, suicide.
Organizer
Sam Rose
Organizer
Winston-Salem, NC
