Series: Telling Other People About Your Mental Illness
“How do I tell other people that I have a mental illness?”
It’s the million-dollar question. When, or if, should you tell your friends and family about your mental illness?
Disclosure is one of the biggest steps in recovery from mental illness, and it is also one of the most terrifying steps to take. People with mental illness face an incredible amount of discrimination in our society, so many sufferers are afraid to break the silence about their mental illness. In some ways, these fears are justified. There is a chance that if you disclose, you will not be believed, or some people will judge you and even discriminate against you. You might find that people treat you differently after you disclose.
However, that doesn’t mean that you should keep your mental illness a secret forever. In my opinion, there are major benefits to telling other people about your mental illness, and disclosure can be a very positive step in your healing. It was in mine.
This week I will be writing a series of 4 articles on disclosure, covering topics such as whether you should disclose, overcoming fear of disclosure, and who you should tell first. I’ll be sharing my own experiences with going public, as well as any advice or warnings that I have picked up along the way.
The first article, Should You Tell People About Your Mental Illness? talks about the reasons why you should and the reasons why you should not tell other people about your mental illness. Disclosure can be very liberating, but it can also be very harming, and it is very important to make sure that you are disclosing for the right reasons.
In the second article, How I Overcame My Fear of Talking About My Mental Illness, I will discuss how I overcame my own fear of disclosure, and I’ll share some of the things that I learned.
The third article, Who Should You Tell About Your Mental Illness?, is about choosing who you will tell about your mental illness, and what to do when you don’t know who you should tell first.
Finally, in the fourth article, How To Tell Someone Else About Your Mental Illness I discuss some of the issues around telling another person about your mental illness.
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Jackal responds:
Posted: March 27th, 2007 at 3:09 pm →
Look forward to reading this series.
sue leach responds:
Posted: March 28th, 2007 at 7:04 pm →
Thank you. I need to tell someone about the abuse I endured in the past. Look forward to hearing from you tomorrow.
MENTAL HEALTH SOURCE PAGE » Blog Archive » Depression or Melancholy, Getting Through Pain, and Virginia Tech responds:
Posted: May 3rd, 2007 at 1:31 pm →
[...] remembers a painful experience and how he was able to get through it. Scott also wrote a series on how to tell other people about your mental illness, a timely article given the recent events at Virginia Tech that may have [...]
" What to do If You Have Been Diagnosed With Depression" by Finding Your Marbles - A Mental Health Survival Guide responds:
Posted: September 9th, 2007 at 1:58 pm →
[...] long ago, I wrote a series called Telling Other People About Your Mental Illness, that covers some of the tough issues and decisions that you will face if you want to talk to [...]