Stigma In Everyday Life

It is very hard to explain a mental illness to a child; so my parents had a very hard job on their hands raising me, along with my two older brothers. From a young age my mother and best friend recall me acting different from most children. I had a list of ten questions I had to ask every night before going to sleep, and if they were not answered I would make myself physically sick, or wet the bed in fear that those around me would end their lives because I wasn’t capable of getting answers. I had delusions, hallucinations, and sever headaches, which then lead to CAT scans and x-rays to make sure there were no tumors or blockages in my head. It was much later in life that my physician, along with psychologist, realized that I was bi-polar. …show more content…
Stigma plays a massive part of my everyday life, and I am constantly worried that people see me as inadequate or discriminate against me because I take anti-psychotic pills daily, or maybe because my anxiety can be restrictive. This stigma has become more evident the older I get. People seem to think they can give advice on how to be “normal” when they themselves have never lived a day as a bi-polar Hispanic woman in a westernized society. My daily life also includes friends who think they mean well constantly pestering me about my medication doses, and then having discussions regarding my mental state with strangers. This invisible stigma doesn’t only come from unknowing friends, but also close family and health care practitioners. Often times it is hard to explain to an old-school Latin American that you cannot eat/drink specific things in correlation with medication, or even that you take medication. This conversation usually leads to conversations about my low tolerance for life’s hardships, or the potential that I have the evil eye. While my grandparents, aunts, and uncles fully believe mental illness to be something you should be able to “shake off” they don’t understand social stigma, and the isolation that is put on me for being different. My achievements are almost always over powered by my mental illness, and how much I’ve “grown out of it” since I was a child. While many times this is an attempt at a complement, it is the opposite for me. Finally, the stigma brought forth by health care practitioners. I’ve seen many doctors and psychologist for a diagnosis, and proper treatment. Because of my family’s distaste for medication, I was in classic therapy, group therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, yoga, seen a naturopathy, and every sport imaginable. Unfortunately, none of these helped, but I did get to see a lot of health care practitioners, and their take on mental illness. With one