Hello friends,
It’s tempting to think of mental illness in terms of diagnoses, and to some extent it makes sense to do so. After all, by necessity there are commonalities in how people experience clinical depression or any other named health outcome. The problem is that there are wide ranges of experiences “within” a diagnosis; how one person experiences and recovers from clinical depression can be dramatically different from the next person.
This is yet another reason why it’s so important to anchor our understanding of mental illness on the perspectives of those whose lives are touched by it. Through this lens we can begin to appreciate how much diversity there is in mental illness experiences and outcomes. We’ll get a chance to do just this as we watch and respond to a video titled, “Mental Health: In Our Own Words” during our conversation this week. I hope to see you there!
Our warm-up question for this week:
Imagine you were going to take a cross-country road trip anywhere in the world…where would you go, and what kind of vehicle would you want to travel in?
See you soon,
Alex