Today is World Mental Health Day. This is a concept very dear to my heart, as it is something I suffer from, as do many in my family. Many of them have died from it, and many of them have tried...

People that suffer from mental illness are real people. They are doctors, they are lawyers, they are therapists, they are engineers, they are artists, and they are all around you...

As *Flutterings said, there is a stigma surrounding mental illness that needs to be addressed. This stigma ensures that people that could be getting help, either supportively or medically, do not.

"Twenty years ago cancer was the 'c-word' - nobody talked about cancer," Malmon said. "That's where we are right now. One in four adults is diagnosed with some form of mental illness ... but we're not discussing it, we're not facing it."

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Mental illnesses are medical conditions that disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others, and daily functioning. Just as diabetes is a disorder of the pancreas, mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life.

Serious mental illnesses include major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and borderline personality disorder. The good news about mental illness is that recovery is possible.

Mental illnesses can affect persons of any age, race, religion, or income. Mental illnesses are not the result of personal weakness, lack of character, or poor upbringing. Mental illnesses are biologically based brain disorders. They cannot be overcome through "will power" and are not related to a person's "character" or intelligence.


Statistics
An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older - about one in four adults - suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. This figure translates to 57.7 million people.

Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety Disorders are the most common mental illness*in the U.S. affecting 40 million (18.1%) of the adult U.S. population (age 18 and older) in a given year.

Anxiety disorders frequently co-occur with depressive disorders or substance abuse. Most people with one anxiety disorder also have another anxiety disorder.

Types of disorders -Numbers and percentages refer to adult U.S. population affected:

* Generalized Anxiety Disorder: 6.8 million, 3.1%.
* Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: 2.2 million, 1.0%.
* Panic Disorder: 6 million, 2.7%.
* Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: 7.7 million, 3.5%.
* Social Anxiety Disorder: 15 million, 6.8%.
* Specific Phobia affects: 19 million, 8.7%.
* Any Phobia (Social Anxiety Disorder, Specific Phobia, Agoraphobia) affects 36 million (16.3%) of adult Americans.

Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder affects approximately 5.7 million American adults, or about 2.6 percent of the U.S. Population age 18 and older in a given year.

Bipolar disorder is commonly misdiagnosed. The average patient receives 3.5 misdiagnoses and consults four physicians before obtaining an accurate diagnosis.

Bipolar disorder and suicide:
* Approximately 1 in 5 people with bipolar disorder eventually commit suicide, a rate 30 times higher than the general population.
* 20-50% of people with bipolar disorder attempt suicide **at least once.

Depression
* More Americans suffer from depression than coronary heart disease (7 million), cancer (6 million) and AIDS (200,000) combined.
* Approximately 20.9 million, or about 9.5 percent of American adults have a depressive disorder in any given year.
* Major depressive disorder affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year.
* Major Depressive Disorder is the leading cause of disability in the U.S. for ages 15-44.
* Depression is the cause of over two-thirds of the 30,000 reported suicides in the U.S. each year.

Suicide
More than 90 percent of people who kill themselves have a diagnosable mental disorder, commonly a depressive disorder or a substance-abuse disorder.

* Every 18 minutes in the United States, someone dies by suicide.
* In 2002, there were 31,655 suicides in the United States.
* In 2002, 132,353 individuals were hospitalized following suicide attempts.
* Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for all U.S. men.
* Males are four times more likely to die from suicide than females.
* Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24 (second leading in some western states.)
* In 2001, 5,393 Americans over age 65 committed suicide. Of those, 85% (4,589) were men and 15% (804) were women.
* The highest suicide rates in the U.S. are found in white men over age 85.
* Suicide rates in the United States are lowest in the winter and highest in the spring, despite popular reports to the contrary.



NOTE: This is far from complete, either in listing the multitude of metal illnesses that people (your family, your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors, and your fellow deivants) suffer from or how they can affect their lives. It is just the most complete listing I could find...


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Today is World Mental Health Day...

Fight the stigma, and spread the word!

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For those of you so interested, a multitude of submissions were posted in the hopes of giving better light (and sometimes the darkness) to these illnesses:

Art
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[link] Oct 10th - Mental Health Day *Flutterings
[link] Too Loud *Pommegranite


Literature - Prose
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[link] Choose. ~dimerization
[link] The Liar *batousaijin


Literature - Poetry
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[link] 18 shades of blue ~DreamsSetOnMute
[link] I Need Help ~x-x-sakura-x-x
[link] Panacea =UnfeelingAlloy
[link] Soiled -poem-. ~MariJoanna
[link] Imprisoned ~alcheme
[link] Inescapably me... ~alcheme
[link] Muse of Madness ~alcheme
[link] Wasting Away ~alcheme
[link] Invisible ~alcheme
[link] Untitled Poem ~SatanicSeraph666


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This is merely a list of people willing to submit their heart, souls, and suffering to further the understanding of a cause, an illness, and a community. Amongst these submissions in *Flutterings spear head ([link]) of an adamant effort to bring awareness of these illnesses are details of people suffering from these illnesses, their overcoming them, and the people they cherish for being there for them. Read this news article, read their deviant submissions, but most especially read their stories in responses and comments to her heroic and brutally honest deviation to not let this day or this ever present part of our community, and your community, go unnoticed and unsupported.

For those of you suffering from mental illnesses that have deviations you would like to submit for other to see, or merely storied for others to understand, speak now.

And for all others, contemplate this quote, both said in jest and absolutely true:

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you."
-- Rita Mae Brown