By Arely Guzman
Mental Health. For me mental health is not a joke, I do take that very personally and I do believe that sometimes people don't put as much attention as it needs.
Mental health is someone's psychological emotional well being, in simpler words it is based on someone's emotions and how their mind thinks the best approach to taking action with how they feel is right. Things you can usually expect from someone who has a mental health disorder is not just always sadness; people usually think that if someone has a mental health disorder it's automatically depression and I feel that's where the ignorance comes in. When people hear you say you're sad or that you do have a mental health disorder they automatically think depression because you are sad but they don't get that a mental health disorder can mean a eating disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychotic disorder, like these disorders aren't about sadness. Anyone with any mental health disorder usually has changes in mood, walk fast or slow, head down, hands and arms close to their body, and the way they dress usually is dark and gloomy and over all their facial features just look off.
As I mentioned before I don't take mental health lightly because I did go through depression and I do see it as the biggest disorder and it is also one of five most common. When having depression you literally feel like you want the world to crack open in half and swallow you, or at least that's how it made me feel. I was once part of a clinical trial for depression on February 16,2019. I had depression and anyone with it would ever wish it upon someone else, I wanted doctors to study me to help others, I wanted doctors to study me to understand my brain, I wanted doctors to study me to learn emotions, I wanted doctors to study me to learn. The clinical trial was about figuring out what type of activities, who, or what could help relieve one's depression. I was there with about sixty other people ranging from the age of twelve to thirty-four. With this clinical trial many tests were conducted, blood samples were taken, physicals were done, head CT scans, MRI scans and so many more. With so many tests that were done the doctors involved in the clinical trial came to a conclusion that four of five people with depression, if socializing with animals it helped relieve stress that is connected with depression. As well as four of five people with depression do not like to be left alone.
With that clinical trial I really felt understood and had a better understanding of what exactly is depression, what mental health is. I was in one of both of those clinical trials that liked working with animals and that did not like to be left alone. Although the issue with these clinical trials is that they don't get funding from the government because not enough people believe it is important enough to have their taxes sent to those clinical trials. Clinical trials aren't as scary as they sound, they are not that terrifying like, in reality they aren't that bad, at least not from my personal experience. Clinical trials just consist of so many tests. It can actually be very interesting and exciting.
What I am trying to go with here is that mental health is such a huge thing in life, that can affect anyone and that it needs all the attention it could possibly get.
My inspiration for this writing is that mental health is not a joke and it doesn't get the attention it requires and having personal experience with depression just makes this topic so much more meaningful and important because I want the support people like me need, I want there to be more attention and concern.
The title is ¨Mental Health¨ and I choose that because I want it to be straight to the point so people know immediately what I want to talk about. The name of the author is Arely Carolina Guzman, and the main message of my piece is, mental health is serious, it can affect anyone and it requires a lot of attention, time, and support. Some details I added to make it vivid is I mentioned how depression makes you feel and how you look but I also mentioned a bit of how the clinical trial worked.
For text organization I used description because when I started off my writing i described what depression is, what mental health is, and I even gave real life example of me being in a clinical trial.
The part where it says ¨ Mental health. For me mental health is not a joke, I do take that very personally and I do believe that sometimes people don't put as much attention as it needs¨ This helps out to set the tone in my writing because saying ¨mental health is not a joke¨ it almost stands out in a way where I am demanding and putting my foot down that it's not a joke. As well as the phrase where I say¨ I was once part of a clinical trial on February 16, 2019¨ it is very important because now you know I am giving a real life example and telling you something I first handedly experienced.
My purpose for writing this is to say how mental health really needs more attention and people going through something that serious have to know that they are not alone, that they don't have to fight their own battles by themselves and a hope that one day there will be that extra support we need when it comes to mental health. My audience I do believe would be our older and younger generations because the older generation is who is in charge of us and they are the ones that can take action into solving the ignorance of some people about mental health. It is also for our younger generation because I do believe we are not heard enough, we are taken as a joke, but in reality we are the ones who need someone to speak for us, we are the ones going through all these mental health issues and yet no one thinks it serious enough to put their attention to it. The way I decided to connect with my audience is by telling them what I went through with that clinical trial. That I personally know how it feels to be depressed and i personally know how people just brush it off because of how ignorant people can be so I just want my audience to know that they aren't alone, they aren't the only ones fighting battles, they aren't the only ones to have dark pasts, and with that I just wish to give them some hope that one day people will listen and we won't be ignored and one day all these battles with ourselves will go away.
I really liked that she talked about this topic because I feel that people don't really take these topics as seriously as they should. This piece made me think of how she went thru depression, she tells us how she felt and that's just heart warming.
--Luz Del Valle