Mental Health, etc.

May is not only Military Appreciation Month, it's Mental Health Awareness Month as well-and both tie in.

It's the third decade of the 21st century, and mental health is still so stigmatized-discrimination that should indeed not be happening in the year 2022.

I've thought for a while, writing my character Stormy some years ago for the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, there's no question that in real life she would have been institutionalized, since she was a self harmer (cutter.) I initially gave her too much of a "feel good ending" even though she saw her girlfriend gunned down, and a week later heard the execution shots of her mentor Padraic Pearse from her jail cell. She was a self harmer with mental health issues to begin with-in real life, she absolutely would have been thrown into an asylum. Here we are, 106 years in the future from when her story takes place, and mental health has hardly budged.

Going off that note, a "real-world" example is my uncle, who struggles more and more every day. He was a college professor and holds a PhD-he is off the charts brilliant, but he had to stop when the mental health issues became too much. My parents and I are pretty much all that he has. My parents aren't young, face it, and I'm constantly balancing school, military, and my own mental health-we try but it is exhausting. And it sure as Hel isn't his fault-it's no one's fault but our screwed up system's.

I've posted about the "Autistic woman poster child" Emilie Autumn, and how her music has gotten me through soooo much. Now I have a love-hate relationship with her-I still say pick up her book "The Asylum For Wayward Victorian Girls." Very twisted, but still worth a read.