Ending Stigmatization and Discrimination on Mental Disorders

Living with Mental Disorders
People who have mental disorders always have a hard time in the community since they are not easily accepted. In most cases, people always consider them violent because they have a difficult social life. After exploring BringChange2Mind.org, I have learned that mental disorders such as bipolar, schizophrenia, and PSTD cause stress and depression to individuals or even attracts discrimination and unfair treatment by the society. Sadly, it attracts other social issues such as poverty, homelessness, or struggle to find jobs due to their condition. Moreover, they find it hard to communicate with others because they lack moral support. Therefore, the circumstances make their life unbearable, which predisposes them to drug abuse and other risky behaviors.
BringChange2Mind.org shows that there have been many cases of people with mental disorders trying to commit suicide because they are unhappy with their lives. It confirms that their social lives become destabilized (Boyd, Adler, Otilingam, & Peters, 2014). Living with a mental disorder can be tough because the victims always face stigmatization. In some societies, they are considered cursed or affected by evils spirits. Such misconceptions hamper efforts by organizations and medical practitioners to help such victims towards recovery.
According to National Alliance on Mental Illness (n.d), approximately 43 million Americans suffer from mental illnesses presently. Moreover, people who suffer from bipolar are shown to undergo depression and euphoria. Their mood swings are considered to change quickly and extremely because they can be happy at one moment and angry or furious within a short while. People who have bipolar disorder are always advised not to take any drug and alcohol since it ends up affecting their thinking capacity. There are many reported cases of people known to have committed suicide under the influence of drugs, and at the same time, they had the bipolar disorder. For example, Nirvana leader, Kurt Cobain ended up committing suicide after many years of suffering from being bipolar.
It is also clear from BringChange2Mind.org that people living with bipolar disorders also have a hard time trying to communicate with people around them. They find it hard to interact with others because their personalities and behaviors are unpredictable. At times, they tend to become violent, angry and furious since they have alterations in their moods. Bipolar disorder causes people to have a low self-image, mood swings, and self-destructive behavior (Casaletto, 2016). With the low self-image, most people who suffer from bipolar end up committing suicide. Bipolar people are also known to face difficulties among people, which make them have complicated relationships. At the workplace, people who suffer from bipolar end up having difficult relations with their co-workers since they do not get along.
The bipolar disorder tends to affect the social life of many individuals. Organizations such as BringChange2Mind.org were created to help people who have mental disorders to appreciate themselves in the community. The organization also creates awareness of people who have the mental disorder and how people should understand and treat them regardless of their condition. It seeks to end the discrimination and stigmatization of people with mental disorders. The website BringChange2Mind.org is helpful because it focuses on people and their difficulties. It also offers a platform where people with mental disorders can share their experience and be helped to deal with some situations.
Overall, people living with mental disorder always have difficult lives since they cannot associate with other people. Living with mental disorder causes people to be isolated since they face discrimination from the community. Some of the challenges that such people face are largely related to discriminating and stigmatization from other members of the society. The circumstances should change because everyone deserves love and caring as seen from the efforts by BringChange2Mind.org. It will also reduce incidences of drug abuse or the desire to commit suicide.


References
Boyd, J. E., Adler, E. P., Otilingam, P. G., & Peters, T. (2014). Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness (ISMI) scale: a multinational review. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 55(1), 221-231.
Casaletto, K. B., Kwan, S., Montoya, J. L., Obermeit, L. C., Gouaux, B., Poquette, A., & HNRP Group. (2016). Predictors of psychotropic medication adherence among HIV+ individuals living with bipolar disorder. The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 51(1), 69-83.
National Alliance on Mental Illness (n.d). Mental Health by the Numbers. Retrieved 23 Nov. 2017 from https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-by-the-numbers