The mind of a human being is one of the most complex systems in our world. It has over 100 billion neuron cells; nearly twice the amount of people who have ever lived on earth at one point or another. But each of these cells are important to the function of the brain, and things can happen inside the brain which can cause malfunctions. These are what we today call mental illnesses.

1 in 5 of the people around the entire world have a mental illness. Let me explain; a mental illness is something that causes a person’s brain to function irregularly towards certain things. (Thakkar, VII) That’s 20% of the population, or 1.4 billion people. Obviously, that’s alot of irregularity. But, what is a mental illness? I mean, what can be classified as a mental illness? Well, there are two main branches of mental illness: Anxiety Disorders and Mood Disorders. There are many other sub-branches, but these two make up the majority of that 1.4 billion people.

So, what is an Anxiety Disorder? Well, a good definition would be an uncontrollable chronic worry, that will remain active for a majority of a person’s life. (Connoly, 1) Phobias are a great example of something that most people know about. A phobia is an irrational, exaggerated, or unrealistic fear that an individual is heavily affected by. (Monroe, 3) Generally, when someone experiences a phobia towards something, such as spiders, it isn’t actually as dangerous or scary as their mind perceives it to be. (Monroe, 3) For example, with over 35,000 species of discovered spiders on earth, only about a dozen of them are harmful in any way to humans. But yet, millions of people suffer from arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. That’s the thing, people who suffer from phobias aren’t scared of the things they are for any specific reason, it’s just because of a malfunction in the brain. One of the most common types of phobias is called Agoraphobia. (Monroe, 6) It basically can cause three things; the fear of being alone, being afraid of leaving their home, and causing people to not want to get stuck in a position where it is hard to leave, or exit. (Monroe, 7) This phobia completely changes lives; it makes people not able to be home alone, and causes people to never go out and be active with their lives. Phobias such as these, and others cause people to have to completely rearrange their lives to not trigger their phobias. But, there are also other kinds of Anxiety Disorders. One of which is very well known, OCD, or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. (Connolly, 72) A person can be defined as having this disorder when they constantly have uncontrollable, unwanting, but yet extremely impulsing thoughts, usually very often. (Connolly, 72)These impulses can be obsessive cleaning, or shopping, or even eating. (Connolly, 72-73) But it’s not like these people can resist these thoughts. It is literally something they cannot control. (Connolly, 72)
Studies show that one in 100 teens worldwide suffer from OCD. (Connolly, 72) This may seem like a relatively low number, but think about it. Based on these facts, if you were to pull 100 average teenagers just out of the blue, at least 1 of those people will have OCD. This disorder changes lives; it forces people to not participate in things that they truly want to. For example, a woman from Maryland, whose name was Diance, suffered from OCD and other anxiety disorders. She was a friendly person, and loved to be social with people, but eventually her obsessive compulsive disorder got to the point where she wouldn’t even allow people to be near her. She said, “Forget about Dating” because she knew that there was no way her OCD would let her get that close to people. It ruined a big portion of her life, and went from a very social person to someone who was alone a majority of the time. This is a good example of an effect that OCD can have on people, and just Anxiety disorders in general. But there are even more major variations of anxiety disorders; Separation Anxiety disorder and Posttraumatic stress disorder and both good examples of this. Separation Anxiety Disorder, or SAD is very common throughout young kids and teenagers. (Conolly, 32) It causes people to become scared or anxious to be separated from an object or person; it causes people to have to live their entire youth with their mom, or dad, or with something like a video game. (Connolly, 32) Obviously, it has a huge impact on people, causing them to never be able to go off and do their own thing. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD is a common anxiety disorder that usually occurs after someone experiences a traumatic event, such as a car crash, or coming back from the army. (Connolly, 89) It causes aggression, hyperactivity, and can especially lead into other mental illnesses. (Connolly, 90) Statistics show that one to fourteen percent of the general public can develop PTSD sometime during their life. (Conolly, 89) This disorder makes people who were once friendly turn into hostile people who aren’t very good to be with. Anxiety disorders heavily affect lives, as you can clearly see. But there is a whole other side to the mental illness story. Mood Disorders.

A mood disorder can be classified as a disorder in which a person's mood varies greatly in a way that is unusual to humans, and doesn't return to the mood baseline after a period of time. (Thakkar, 1) There is evidence to show that mood disorders existed in culture as far back as the old testament (Thakkar, 2) But there are two main types of mood disorders; depression, and bipolar. Starting off with depression, it is a disorder that makes people generally depressed, or overly sad (Thakkar, 12) it more specifically causes insomnia fatigue, and sometimes even constipation (Thakkar, 12) Some people just sit around, not wanting to work, or do anything (Thakkar, 19) but the worst thing that comes from depression is when it reaches the point in which a person will experience suicidal thoughts (Thakkar, 12) One of the main causes of death for teenagers is suicides, caused by depression. (Thakkar, 14) This is why depression is one of the most serious mental illnesses, and definitely one that every single person should know about. But there is also a whole other sort of mood disorder, Bipolar. Before I go into explaining about Bipolar, I must discuss something called the Bipolar Spectrum. It shows how a person’s mood can vary, showing the lines in which natural mood variations occur, and how beyond that can be considered as a mood disorder. (Thakkar 25) Basically, going far below the normal mood bar causes depression, while going above the line causes bipolar. So, you could think of Depression as being overly sad, while Bipolar is “overly happy” but it’s not really that way. Bipolar isn’t being overly happy, its being overly energetic, but it causes a sort of inverse of depression. While those with depression feel very sad, like they serve no purpose, and they just want to lay around, do nothing, Bipolar is the opposite. People with bipolar will be very overly-energetic, and will go out and do something they wouldn’t normally do. (Thakkar 24) One good example is shopping. People with bipolar may go out and do extreme over shopping, buying not only things that they don’t need, but things that nobody ever needs. (Thakkar 27) The people who do these things don’t really know why they have the impulse to do them, but they say that they feel like they need to go out a do something, right then and now, whenever they are having one of these Bipolar episodes. Bipolar can also lead to suicide, killing less than depression, but still being one of the highest causes of death in America. (Thakkar 19)

So, why should people care about mental illnesses? Why should it matter to people who don’t have any mental illnesses? Well, this question has many different answers. Mental Illnesses aren’t just a weird mind disfunction, they are a legitimate disability, a disease, something that can be caught, and cured. Now I’m not to say that mental illnesses are contagious, just that these are actual diseases, such as cancer, or AIDS, or the common cold. Yet, people in our society can tend to think that people with mental illnesses are helpless, and that they aren’t really a part of society themselves anymore (Thakkar, 58) This isn’t true, at all. Depression, for example, is very treatable via different methods, such as therapy, light therapy, and different medications (Thakkar, 18) Phobias can be treated by simply trying to conquer ones phobia, to face it, and therapy (Monroe, 43) Yet, people have come to the false conclusion that people who have mental illnesses are hopeless. And this is why it is important to raise awareness about this, to educate more people about the topic, so that people don’t jump to such untrue conclusions. Another whole area of reasons why awareness should be raised about mental illness is the fact that these people, with Anxiety Disorders, or Bipolar, or depression, they walk into places and get made fun of. Their lives are already bad enough, with them having to put up with the challenges that their illnesses offer. But then, they get made fun of, just because they are different from others. And this is something we as humans need to learn to accept. These people either are beginning treatment or need to begin treatment, and it’s not like they can help it while they still have these illnesses. Making fun of people like this is just going to make everything worse, and it could even make the person with the mental illness commit suicide. This is why we need to raise awareness about Mental Illnesses.