Stephen Hogan

The War Inside: What's so Funny?

That uncomfortable feeling in your stomach or the struggle to rise from bed every day or,
in the worst cases, the lines of red on your body that help you push past the pains of life: it hits
again. To this many would pull off a funny line, or sarcastic comment, that essentially tells the
person to "walk it off" or "get over it."
To the people who do not suffer from and deal with these pains every day it is a joke,
something to walk off and take your pills for. That is, until someone cannot. Until someone
decides it is too much to keep fighting, too hard to stay strong, too difficult to plaster a smile on
their faces and laugh it off. These people decide that they have too little to fight for and they end
it.
What is the joke in such a thing; how can someone say a mental illness is not a serious
illness?
The fact is, mental illness is not well known by people who don't suffer from it. When the
term mental illness is brought up people limit the term to depression, anxiety, and other issues
that are solely connected to the mind of people, rather than the mentality as well. Mentality being
how people can see themselves as three hundred pounds, give or take, even though they are only
one hundred pounds. These cases lead to anorexia and bulimia, both being mental illnesses. All
of these forms of mental illness are taxing on the body and mind, meaning they have physical
symptoms as well as mental. One, Lindsay Holmes, wrote an article called "7 Mental Illness
Myths People Still Believe" which spoke of certain things that people did not quite comprehend
about mental health problems. One of these being that "mental illness is not 'all in your head'"

with statements that explained the physical symptoms, such as changes in appetite or
cardiovascular problems or stomach issues (2).
Mental illness has it's critics, however, claiming that it is nothing more than a myth and
that people should just get over it and move on. One of this notions biggest proponents was Dr.
Thomas Szasz, who wrote a book entitled The Myth of Mental Illness. This book showed that
Szasz saw mental illness as "medicalizing mortality and the typical dilemmas and struggles of
human life" (Poulsen 1). This coming from a certified doctor has influence over people,
influence to get people to look into and interpret mental illness as they will. However, it led
many people to see mental illness as a social hoax, a sham, a way to gain attention from people
who would normally just ignore you, be it family or peers. Not that everybody thought, or thinks
this, but it was not helped when the media took the idea to glorify and beautify the idea of mental
illness. They took the depressed boy with suicidal thoughts and turned his sad, deep cut marks
into "art" that drew the girl in to "fix" him. This only progressed the idea that mental illness was
an art form for attention seekers.
After all of these glorified mental illnesses and people calling it a hoax, it is pulled into
reality by the people who have those few too many issues to pull themselves back from. The
ones who suffer the most from this disease. The ones like, Robin Williams.
Robin Williams was a great man: a genie, a comedian, a woman, a father, and a very
depressed man. The last one was something that very little people knew about; how could
anyone know about it, all the man did was smile and make others smile. However on the inside
he suffered, but he couldn't let that show. He could not let his children see that. He could not let
anyone else suffer from that either, thus his career as a comedian follows suit. He knew what

sadness was, he knew what it felt like to be on the brink of losing it and he did not want anyone
else to suffer from such pain and so he used his talents to make others smile and laugh.
It is evident that there will never be a time when mental illness is universally received as
a serious illness. Many people still joke about taking a "mental health day" from work or school
and it is just another reason why these diseases are not taken seriously. It is a lot to tell all people
that they must change their beliefs, and as such if even a small percentage more of people would
begin to look at mental illness as a series disease, then help could be more easily accessible, by
which it is meant that it would be available with less criticism.
As much as we want to jump in and say that people who receive help for their mental
issues be it depression, anxiety, or some kind of eating disorder; we know that it is not true. We
know that inside our heads we look at the people who go through these things and think, or
sometimes even directly ask, what is causing it today. As if their life is a dramatized sitcom
where each episode, day, is a new event that they have to over come. The only harsh reality to
that analogy is that in the end that sitcom must come to an end.
Imagine, a boy or girl suffering from depression. They live that sitcom; they come into
school with hidden lines running across there legs or arms, whichever is easier to hide, and act as
if nothing is wrong one day. But the next day, they seem sad and melancholy and they aren't
talking as much or laughing. Most people will go up to the person and ask what is wrong and the
person will say "nothing." Most people wouldn't believe him or her, but wouldn't want to push
into their lives and would just assume it to be a personal issue. But what really is the difference
between the two days if this person has been suffering from depression in both of them?
Depression can come in waves where people can just have an off day or it may even last for

months. This is a serious depression called "Dysthmia" (Orlov 2), as said by an article by pbs.
This child will be told in school or work to "get over it" or that "it could always be worse" and
that will not help them. In fact it is more likely to hurt them, but what else can someone who
does not understand what is wrong do?
What people can do is educate themselves. People can learn about the signs and
symptoms of depression to help others work through it. People can give someone with
depression their shoulder to cry on, or lend them their ear to talk to. People can help people with
anxiety talk in public by telling them to focus on them or help them by just standing with them
when they need to do something big, just the act of letting them know they aren't alone is enough
to calm them down. And as for eating disorders, people can stop telling these young girls that the
examples that they should follow as beauty standard are the super models, whose physicality is
what it is due to the proportions of their height and weight. All of these little things are all it
takes to show the people who suffer from these diseases that they are not alone and that it is not a
joke. And if people stopped treating it like a joke, how could it be beautified and dramatized for
public appeal. In the end if it was taken seriously more people would be able to confess their
problems without fear of being called an attention seeker or a drama queen.
Until then the only solution seems to be to take our pills, fall asleep, and hope that no one
notices that the pain of the day is worse than everyday before.