Friend tried to hang himself, brain-dead now. Father of 3. Why?

[Denninmi]

16. Again, sorry for your pain.

"this truly is a sickness, it has no bearing n what kind of a person he is"

THAT right there, In your few words, is the answer to ending the stigmatization of mental illness.

And, stigma is a tremendous reason why people do not seek treatment. in many ways, the way people with mental illness are treated is very analogous to the way AIDS patients, especially gay AIDS patients, were treated when it was a new disease. Ostracized, mocked, ridiculed, feared, isolated, abandoned, fired from jobs, you name it.

My own battle with this has been made so much harder because of the fear of stigma. I haven't encountered much real world stigma about myself because so few people knew. Now, almost all of the significant people in my life who deserved to know have been told. And it is a relief not to have to hide things. Even simple things - for example, I told me boss and my coworker everything, including the tale of my suicide attempt. They were great about it. But, a tiny liberating thing for me - I no longer have to hide the prescription bottles I had in a document lock box under my desk. I kept them there because I was more afraid of keeping them at home. I feared that people would see the name of the prescribing physician and the name of the drug. Scarlet Letter.

Scarlet Letter? Eh, not so much. I take Prozac 30 mgs and lamictal 100 mgs and dropping. Big fucking deal. My next door neighbor is dying of stage 4 cancer, she takes about a dozen things every day, no one looks down on her for that. I and everyone like me deserves to be treated exactly the same.