Mental Health Awareness Month!

Good Morning !

In case you were not totally aware, like I was, May is the Mental Health Awareness Month. In fact, i’ll be guest-posting about my own experience with Anxiety and Depression over at Crimson’s blog !

My first post on her blog will be May 10th, about my experience working in Retail with my mental illnesses; I also included the introduction of where it all started too – as it was because of a work experience in particular.

Mental health representation in books is something fairly new to me, as I only really paid attention to it once i’ve joined the book blogging community; so give or take a year ago.

How good or bad the representation is done really depend from person to person; As it’s not something everybody will 100% feel it the same way, some may say they haven’t related at all and it was “too much” or “not enough”, while others might have felt that it represented pin-point how they were feeling. There’s really no middle ground when speaking of mental health – from what i’ve seen, it’s pretty much hit or miss.

However, I think you can most definately tell when it has been experienced by the writer itself rather than just studying it or “someone told me”.. Specially if we are speaking of panic attacks for exemple, I feel like a person who haven’t had atleast one cannot understand or even describe it properly “true to experience”. It is a frightening thing that feels very real and physical, rather than all in our mind. My therapist was even kinda shocked that I knew instinctly that my first panic attack was what it was, as maybe 95% of people think they’re having a heart attack before thinking of a panic attack.

One instance that just blew my mind was the day before yesterday night, as I was reading Supermarket by the artist “Logic” (Alex did a book review here) ; Of course he had warned me right before I got to that point that he indeed wrote the “Part One” of his book while he was himself in a depressive state and “Part Two” was written after he got better.. but oh my the description of Flynn’s panic attack just blew me away on how real it felt, reading it I was even holding my breath/breathing quickly where I needed to relax my breathing to a normal rate. What’s more ? Flynn reacted the same way I did myself upon being told that maybe he shall see a therapist, which is of course « But i’m not crazy!! »

Which is part of why mental health is so important to have represented, really in any media.. The amount of people who come up diagnosed with thoses are always growing, because society is a tad bit more “welcoming” than it was ages ago and it’s a bit more okay to work toward mental health .. though there’s still a long way to go. Like Matt Haig says in his book “Reasons to Stay Alive”, More people struggle with thoses because the technicalities of life always increase and all thoses new stuff gets out in terms of technology … and yet our brains and abilities remains the same .. So we are in a great imbalance.

Having what we feel and our struggles represented in a book (or any other media) helps us feels like we aren’t alone, that it’s real and more importantly that it’s normal and there’s nothing wrong with us.

♥ I’ve also did a post of books i’ve picked up because of my mental illnesses, as i’ve been told it had some great Anxiety/Depression reps.

Which book had a good representation of your mental health?
Any books with MH representation you’re eager to read?