Why People Don’t ‘Get’ Mental Illness and How You Can Help

When someone breaks a leg, people “get” it. They understand it. They empathize with it. They’re compassionate about it. The same thing is true when people get cancer or undergo surgery for a heart condition or even get the flu. And yet when someone has a mental illness, people just don’t “get” it. And in spite of spending more than a decade educating about my mental illness, bipolar disorder, sometimes I feel like they never will. This tends to make people with mental illness feel alone.

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