It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. What can you do to educate yourself on mental health issues and be a good friend, ally, and overall person? Read this thread.

Do your own research. You can find pretty much any information online on mental disorders whether it be depression or schizoaffective disorder. Get some basic info online and then talk to people.

Talk to mentally ill people. Ask them how you can help. (These should be people in your life, not strangers) Be a good listener, don’t try to fix them, and accept that their illness affects almost everything.

Talk to non mentally ill people. Call them out when they say or do something offensive. Like using the p slur, assaulting someone, or upholding stigma. Don’t leave it all up to us to defend ourselves from harm.

Stop judging us when we display unappealing symptoms like poor hygiene, psychosis, or mood swings. Mental illness is hard to deal with and it literally takes lives. We don’t need to feel “othered” because of something we never asked for in addition to the symptoms themselves.

Don’t make suicide jokes. Must I explain? Also don’t used the phrase “committed suicide” bc it implies that the person committed a crime, furthering stigma. Instead say “died by suicide”, “took their life”, or just “passed away”.

Continue to teach yourself. I, even as a mentally disabled person, have to learn as new information is coming out. There is always going to be something to learn and that may also just be from a person’s own experience, not the web.

Advocate for free/affordable mental health services. Most states are lacking. Insurance doesn’t cover everything even though mental health is proven to be just as important as physical health. Put pressure on your representatives to actually do something.

Some mentally disabled people have service dogs, not just emotional support animals. Service dogs are there to actually help when something goes wrong and save many people’s lives. They aren’t only for physically disabled folk so get that out of your head.

While you’re here, I wrote a blog about how to help someone who is suicidal. Please give it a read. You never know when you might need it. https://ssapphyremaree.wixsite.com/ssmcreations/post/how-to-help-someone-who-is-suicidal

Oh and learn the difference between a psychopath and a psychotic person. Psychopaths don’t feel empathy (that doesn’t make them inherently bad). Psychotic people experience psychosis (delusions & hallucinations). That doesn’t make them bad either.