My Personal Project

As a photographer I think it is really important to have personal projects. 
Many of the photographers that I know and admire, have personal photographic projects that they work on. Usually they are bigger in scope than the every day work that the photographer does. They require more time, more intense thought and a lot of passion.

Even before I became a photographer I had a passion about helping stop the stigma of mental illness in our country. That is my personal project. Having a family member with a major mental illness and on a much smaller scale, myself,  dealing with depression and anxiety, I have spent a major portion of my adult life learning about mental illness. I have seen and felt first hand the stigma. The knowing that others will feel differently about you if they know. Knowing that you will be seen as weak, strange, odd, even scary just because something is wrong with your brain is quite a bad feeling.  So, many people will try to hide their illness. They will not seek help from professionals. They will not take the medications that could be so helpful to them. All because they don't want to be judged by others. 

What causes judging and stigma? Ignorance. Sure there might be a few commercials on tv about depression or anxiety. People see them and forget them. Unless you are directly involved with it most people don't give a whole lot of thought to mental illness. Then a terrible tragedy will occur, a mass shooting or other act of violence and terms start flying around such as crazy, nuts, sicko, schizo and so many other words to describe the perpetrator. Eventually in people's minds mental illness starts to equal evil. Someone would have to be completely sick to do such horrible things. Mental illness starts to equal "less than", "worse than", all lumped together.

The fact is that simply is not true. According to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness):

"Mental illnesses are serious medical illnesses. They cannot be overcome through "will power" and are not related to a person's "character" or intelligence. Mental illness falls along a continuum of severity. Even though mental illness is widespread in the population, the main burden of illness is concentrated in a much smaller proportion-about 6 percent, or 1 in 17 Americans-who live with a serious mental illness. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that One in four adults-approximately 57.7 million Americans-experience a mental health disorder in a given year."

So as intelligent human beings we need to learn about mental illnesses. Just as we have learned about diabetes, cancer, and many other illnesses. We need to regard mental illnesses as something that can be treated. I could talk about this all day and bore the heck out of you, but I won't. If you made it this far then you realize that I really do want to help change the stigma in this country. 

I am making it my personal project.