Mental Illness And Indifference

Indifference to Mental Illness

In my opinion, indifference is a philosophy. I believe that people follow indifference in their everyday lives. One thing I feel most people are indifferent to is mental illness. In my opinion, parents will say that their kids aren’t actually depressed, bipolar, OCD, etc. I have heard parents say that their kids are acting depressed or acting bipolar for attention, but in reality mental illness affects about 18.5% of Americans in a year. I believe some people also do not deal with mental illness because they think it’s contagious. They feel as if helping someone with depression will bring them down. Another way I think we’re indifferent to mental illness is because people think they don’t have time to deal with

I’ve heard people that have major signs of depression say that depression isn’t a “real problem”. I’ve also heard some parents say that OCD is something that kids will grow out of. I do believe that to an extent, but some illnesses(depression, schizophrenia, etc.), are more serious. The more serious the illness I think there will be less of a chance that time will heal it.

I think that some people are afraid to help others with mental illnesses because they feel as if they will catch that illness. Mental illness is not contagious, however it can be passed through a family genetically. It could also trigger symptoms of a mental illness depending how severe the person’s illness is. Research says that the most common mental illnesses passed through genes are Obsessive Compulsive Disorder(OCD), Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Depression.

They don’t want to sit down and talk to their kid or they don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars taking them to the doctor, then getting medicine and doing check-ups. I think this can be very depleting to the child that has the mental illness because they know that something is wrong with them, but they think their parent won’t do anything about it.

Some may argue that this indifference is not true, but I think that parents are indifferent to their children’s mental illness. They don’t have the medical knowledge to define the difference between temporary blues and a serious mental illness. I also think that family and friends may be indifferent to mental illness because they don’t have time to help with it and lastly, I think that people are afraid to help other people affected by mental illness. I think the reason people are afraid to help is because they’re afraid mental illness is