Mental illness is a weakness, a character flaw

As difficult as it can sometimes be, it’s important to differentiate between symptoms, resulting from thinking patterns or brain chemistry, and personality. Mental illness is not something reserved for the morally weak, or something a person can overcome by sheer willpower.

Mental illness will never affect me.

I wish this was the case my friend. There is no such thing as “immunity” to mental illness. It’s is not exclusive to any particular demographic, it’s not a something that a person can be too intelligent to fall prey to.

People with mental illness are dangerous

While the media often portrays the mentally ill as dangerous criminals,statistics show that sufferers of mental illness are not any higher than in the general population and in fact are more likely to be victims of violence and exploitation.

Mental illness is as simple as cause and effect.

We are still coming to an understanding with regards to how mental illnesses’ come about. While it’s possible to inherit a predisposition, a variety of factors are involved with the development of mental illness, usually a combination of biological and experiential factors.