What They Don't Tell You About Mental Illness | Elizabeth Medina | TEDxSpeedwayPlaza

so I want to start off my talk with a quick disclaimer I am very excited to be here but I'm also incredibly terrified I'm speaking about mental health and mental illness so that means I'll be talking about a subject that you all know is taboo and something that society doesn't really like mentioning and while I'm not afraid of people's judgement anymore because of what I have been through I am afraid of the consequences that come out of that judgment I'm afraid of being isolated I am terrified of feeling like something's my fault when it wasn't and I'm also afraid of being ousted for going through something that's completely normal it's so normal that one in four adults actually suffer from some sort of mental illness so I want you to take that in count yourself the person to the left the person to the right of you and the person behind her in front of you that's for one of you is suffering from mental illness but we're all high-functioning adults people don't know that but take me for example um I got into UT as a freshman I was very excited you know hukum horn so I've had school pride since I was 12 mostly because the boy had a crush on war a lot of long-horned gear but that's besides the point mmm-hmm I got into UT and my first semester included fighting with my parents because I didn't want me to leave home getting cut off financially taking out loans having my dad get diagnosed with leukemia the same type of leukemia that took his father before him by the way so that wasn't a fun talk to have it also included getting phone calls from my siblings saying you know it's not your fault that our dad has cancer but oh my goodness if you had have just stayed home he would be healing so much faster if you would have stayed home my relationship with my father wouldn't have gone south because they they supported my decision to come to UT UT to great school but that meant them fighting and disagreeing with my father which if any of you have grown up in any sort of Dominican household you know that what father says is like the law and so I was getting a lot of blame put onto me and it was a lot of other people's baggage but I carried it with me because I believed them so that's the end of my freshman year and I was pretty isolated that summer I stayed with my parents and I got a job and I think two maybe three events happened that caused the total shutdown of my brain because I wanted to defend itself and that was one the resurfacing of a high school classmate who assaulted me my senior year came back up second one was finding out that a loved one was suicidal and I didn't really know how to digest that information and the third one was that I was feeling so lonely because I was isolated my freshman year that I decided to do sorority rush because nothing says I'm not lonely like buying two hundred sisters however you know things didn't really go quite as planned I ended up not getting into the sorority I wanted I wasn't going to pay thousands of dollars to mean the one I didn't want to be in long story short I ended up alone again and I just shut off I grew numb I started lashing out at people I cared about blaming them I had one friend at this university that was the young man that I was dating at that time I blamed everything on him he was a really toxic situation to just really be around me and you know I could go through all of the the boring part of depression where you basically want to sleep all day not shower not eat not do anything really and and I'll just skip forward to the part where I was nearly fertilised and that was pretty hard because I mean I was almost hospitalized but what ended up happening was through talking to my therapist she was telling me okay well we have a couple options because we want you to change what you've been doing I got to do this thing called an intensive outpatient program which is basically group therapy four times a week for an hour and a half each time so it was definitely intensive but group therapy is actually what I attribute most of my healing to and the reason was is because I walked into this IOP expecting a lot of individuals to be sort of clouded put off and basically to look like this thank you I drew up myself and instead I was actually greeted with a group of maybe 10 to 15 people who were all high functioning adults by the way there was one one young lady she was a computer science major she had like a three nine I think cuz I ended up talking to her she was so passionate about her career and there's another young lady who was in a spirit group who was basically a non-greek sorority um there was a young man who talked too much oh there was a UT football player and there was me a pageant queen who's pre-med and does does science and so I looked around this room and everyone was so normal we have breaks because an hour and a half is way too long to sit in one room and we all joked we all had the same TV show like the same TV shows we all had homework a lot of us were again high functioning adults we paid the bills but we also suffered from mental illness that's why we were there and I didn't see people with a big sweatshirt that just kind of hid to themselves saying like I'm sad don't look at me but instead saw very normal people and I was highly surprised so I was in pageant queen right and here's my Miss America crown pretty sparkles and the thing is is that no one knew that I was suffering the same way how anyone would look around that room and say I would have never thought any of these people are suffering from mental illness is the same way you would have looked at me because the night before I won this before when scholarships that I could help pay for school was the day before or no I'm sorry was the day after just one day after my dad decided to announce to the entire apples bees restaurants in a very drunk fashion that he has leukemia I was devastated but I competed in I won and I'm so thankful but that also meant I got to go compete at Miss Texas that summer it also means that I volunteered a lot in that I continue to stay in school and did the whole nine yards and nobody knew I was suffering from depression nobody knew that the entire year that I was experiencing was basically turbulent and I was going through turmoil up until the point that I didn't quite want to die but I definitely didn't want to live anymore until IOP and so I always asked myself I thought about it for quite some time what was it about group that made me heal and it was the fact that maybe it was we were all Longhorns you know we're all cool people right no oh no no it was the fact that we met four times a week for an hour and a half each time that wasn't it either it was actually just the very simple idea that 10 to 15 people could sit in a room and talk about very human experiences and not be judged because the bottom line is I'm sure I could go to any single one of you and say have you ever experienced grief have you ever lost a loved one or have you ever felt lonely and you're going to answer yes to probably all three of those and if not at least one of them and so that's where mental health has an issue today because depression at least has is one of the most well documented diseases that we've had over the past few I don't know millennia but we don't like talking about it because it's sad any sort of mental illness craziest great breeding ground and great foundation for more to fester which is why they come in package deals you know that's why you get depression and anxiety or maybe anxiety and bipolar disorder or maybe ADHD and a DD or maybe you know you go through some sort of traumatic experience you get PTSD and depression just you know two-for-one deals great you know what else comes with a free side of shame and guilt and so when you're already hearing these voices in your head in a near-constant loop of it's your fault you're suffering because it's your fault you can do better you should be happy and you have someone else tell you well have you tried being more positive like no you know what I didn't think about that actually thanks for bringing that up have you tried going outside oh I've just been confined to my bed all day I didn't realize that I didn't have the energy to you know go take care of my basic hygienic needs I didn't realize I could go outside I'm sorry instead of trying to tell someone you know like have you tried these things I'll give you a few tools to help someone and maybe help yourself and that's to be openly honest one of the biggest reasons I ended up healing was because I opened up to a TA I was kind of emotionally unstable that day and I ended up telling her you know I'm going through a really really hard time and she said you know I've gone through a really hard time before in fact I'm going through it right now but every day I find a little something to push through and it sucks but I keep going and then I have students like you who want to have it like real relationship with me and it keeps me going and I said wow the only thing I heard really was I'm also going through a rough time and it made me feel a little less alone I had another TA who's very funny that when I ended up telling him you know I almost withdrew from the University he said I'm a graduate student I know what that feels like because we all go through turmoil we all go through some sort of time in our life where we're going to feel alone in isolation is one of the precursors to mental illness mental illness is a very very human response because we all have different stories but we also have gone through millions and billions of years to all react the same way and so we all can relate and so I want you all to be openly honest with someone I also want you to quit lying y'all are so good at lying you tell someone I'm going to be there for you but actually follow up and do the second part be openly honest and say I will be there for you because I know what it's like to lose a loved one I know the grief forgets it's going to hate you it hurts and sometimes they say time heals but it's been you know three years since you know my best friend passed away and I still hurt but I will be there for you because I know what that feels like that would mean so much more to me and it would make me remember that someone has gone through this and someone has hurt and I'm not alone we go to a school a great school that has over 50,000 students if my statistic is right there might be over 15,000 students here who suffer from mental and we want to sit here and pretend like we shouldn't talk about it because talking about mental illness is weird those people are crazy let me tell you the one in four that have a mental illness versus the three and four the three and four are the crazy ones they're the ones telling me what it's like for my experience I want you all to know that we can have a very human conversation about a very human experience and it won't be hard just be human open your heart because you know if it's not your friend I could be you thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 878,919

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Health, Depression, Illness, Mental health, Psychology, Students, Youth

Id: ieXB-BGxYwg

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2016