How Mental Illness Affects A Person's Life

Mental illness touches everyone’s life in one-way or another. Illness could directly affect a family member, a coworker, or a close friend. It could even indirectly affect a person’s life. A teacher could have a missing student or an employer could be missing an employee because of a situation involving a mental illness. A friend could miss an opportunity to hang out because of the uncontrollable thoughts in their head. A theater geek or TV fanatic’s favorite work could center on a character with a mental illness. The point is that everyone can be affected by mental illness whether they realize it or not. In my case, I am affected by it directly. It started in the summer of 2012. One night, she got incredibly upset, to a point where she was hysterical and no one could calm her down. We didn’t know what was going and we had no history of mental illness, so once we calmed her down, we went to bed. But it happened again. And it kept happening, night after night, day …show more content…
We adapted. We learned her triggers, what most spurred the anxiety that came with the thoughts, and we learned ways to calm her down. We got her professional help, a clinical psychologist and therapist. We withdrew her from school in favor of home bounding her until she was ready to return to school. And it seemed to improve her mental well being for a while. But at times, she has a period where she’ll revert to an anxiety attack a day. So I try to look out for her when I can. When a situation becomes toxic, I try to help return it to a positive environment. Any time I recognize her facial expressions change, I do the best I can to prevent the attack before it happens. This affects everything I personally do. I have to watch what I say, watch my temper, and watch the behaviors others intensely. It’s hard for me to do everything sometimes. But, at the end of the day she’s in the eye of the hurricane and I’m on the outskirts. I only do what I can to help the