Mental health

Mental health is meaningful to me because as I think about my development into womanhood, I have encountered a mentally ill person at almost every developmental stage of my life.  I was friends with a class mate whose mother was mentally ill. There were days you can see and feel the sadness in his eye but I really never understood why.  I remember her being a very tall woman. She walked up and down our street with an upright posture as if she was a statue. I felt as if she literally owned the air and everything around it.  No matter the circumstance of the weather she would walk up to the house where her son lived with his grandmother, but the grandmother never allowed her to enter the home. Then she would walk away crying and other days she walked away screaming down the same street she walked up with such pride.   I would see him peeking out the window as she walked away with sadness in his eyes.  Sometimes I see her enter the home has if it was by magic.  I quickly realized on such days the grandmother was not home. As a young child I never knew she was mentally ill, but I remember people in town rarely ever spoke to her. As I grew and started to better understand my world, I realize she was different. She was often referred to as a “Mad Woman”, or “crazy in the head”. The sad truth is she was murdered because of her illness. I often think about him and what affect this must have had on him. I have encountered parents who are mentally ill over the years and I think about the affect this disease has on some of my students.  I have always worked in urban communities and have seen so many mentally ill people walking up and down the street and in those moments I would think to myself this getting progressively worse or am I just now noticing it.

 I currently live and work in South Korea and again I see people who appear to be mentally ill walking the streets. South Korea has the largest suicide rate in the progressive world. I see women alter themselves to live in the body of the perfect beauty. One person if not more a day kill themselves in South Korea. Most among the dead are young people.  I never really thought about what programs if any are in place to deal with this problem. I asked a Korean colleague and she said, “the stigma associated with mental illness is a serious one in South Korea”. I asked her what she meant by that. She further explains employers can have access to your medical records and if they see someone is being treated for mental illness they can lose their jobs. The risk is too high for them to seek help.  I later learn that Korea is starting to put programs in place to deal with this problem but it will take some time for more people to seek the help do to the stigma. The program tries to decrease the social stigma attach to mental illness.  The services programs include counseling services, and alcohol counseling centers.   

  The information I have learned will have an impact on my future work because more families are affected with mental ill at a rapid rate in our society. We have to find ways to help these families because our children are being raised in unstable environment which in turn affect their development.