Mental Health Is Not a Luxury – Why Stigma Still Kills

I saw something on TikTok the other day that bothered me. A woman from North Korea was explaining how she came to the United States and how when she had her first baby the doctor and nurses in follow up appointments would ask how her mental health is. She made a joke of it as she stated in North Korea, they are back in the field picking rice by the next day and carrying the baby on their back and no one, absolutely no one, talks about if they are having a hard time.

I felt for an instant, guilty and ashamed. Like it is a luxury to be able to have postpartum depression and get treatment for it. That is the way she joked about it and everyone laughed. I don’t find it funny, and I really don’t think anyone should find it funny.

Is it easier for us to get treatment for illness’s in a first world country. Most definitely. Does it mean that we shouldn’t get help if others in the world cannot? Does it mean that we shouldn’t continue to work on the stigma of mental health illnesses? Does it mean that worldwide suicides are acceptable consequences?  I read that the leader in North Korea had made a law last year that suicide would be considered treason, meaning if you attempted suicide that you would be put in jail or killed. This type of thinking is exactly the stigma that I want to address, it is not always a conscious choice to commit suicide. So if I have constant violent visions in my head and one day I can’t take it anymore and the dark takes over as it has before and my thoughts tell me it’s time to be done with the pain, then I should be jailed? 

Maybe I should be jailed then because I have endometriosis? Maybe I should be jailed if I get diabetes? For any number of physical illnesses, I’m assuming they are not considered treason, but the mental health ones are. There is a genetic component to my mental health, there are other environmental reasons, some even say there is a lack of blood flow in the brain and that is why the TMS works to make the electrical currents freely move in the brain when they are stuck.

People in some countries are jailed for being gay, jailed for speaking their mind, jailed for disobeying their husband, and now jailed for having a mental health condition. I cannot understand these countries for the life of me. Am I grateful that I am here in Canada, without a doubt but it doesn’t make my condition laughable that it isn’t treated properly in other countries.

It’s like saying we used to not wear seat belts in the 80s, we never wore bike helmets, we didn’t put on sunscreen. Is it funny that a lot of kids died in accidents and now have skin cancer? Because we didn’t know better at the time doesn’t make it laughable. Yes we used to drink out of water hoses, yes we ran around the town on our bikes at all hours, yes those were the days but guess what we didn’t all make it out, there were children snatched on their bikes, there were stomach bacteria illnesses, people just chose to look the other way as the right way seemed to difficult.  We aren’t some kinds of strong brave heroes for making it out alive, we were just lucky it wasn’t us.

You are not a hero that you made it out alive and you didn’t get the luxury of having depression, you have just pointed out a worldwide problem where it is even more devastating to be mentally ill in a third world country. It is not laughable at all, and it doesn’t diminish the people who suffer here. Even Kate Spade died of suicide, if you are rich and famous or poor and alone, a person lost to mental health battles is another person lost, and we should all be fighting for each and every one of them.

Chat again soon,

Michelle