Family Interview With Mental Illness

Jan is a close friend of mine I interviewed about the mental health of her grandfather and cousin. She’s a 18 year old african american female from Athens Georgia. Her and I have been close friends since 4th grade, going to the same elementary school, middle school, high school and now college. Over the years I’ve grown closer and closer to her family which made the interview much more interesting. Both her grandfather, Vincent, and cousin, Mark, were in the military which affected their mental health. While fighting for their country they were traumatised leaving them with the mental illness of Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Important at every stage of life, mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well being. This affects the way we feel, think and act determining how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Branching off of that, mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions and disorders affecting your mood, thinking and behavior. A mental health concern becomes a illness when the ongoing signs and symptoms cause frequent stress affecting your ability to function. PTSD is a condition triggered be a traumatizing event that was either experienced or witnessed. Joel Best …show more content…
Since we are such close friends we got off topic quite often until we got into the serious discussions of what her family was going through. To my advantage, while working on my powerpoint and paper I could just call her up if other questions came to me. This interview opened my eyes to how mistreated war veterans are after they’ve done their time serving their country. The aren 't offered the help they deserve after leaving with a mental illness. Both of them have witnessed things the everyday person couldn’t even imagine. Because of this I believe the military should be responsible for making sure these men and women are getting the help they