Can a small child grasp and identify mental health struggles? It is really difficult to see mental health issues in you as a child. You are not going to attribute mental health struggles with the way you think and behave and grasp this concept at such a young age where you are developing and many things are in the process of being learned. You may feel different but you are not going to think this might be a sign of depression etc. Looking back on those moments, this interviewee realized he was incredibly sensitive. One shouldn’t be shamed for being sensitive but he felt he was overly sensitive and easily angered over the smallest things or I got really depressed over long periods of time.
After this interviewee was suicidal, he told himself that there’s a whole community that he wants to tap into and help. He didn’t want people to go through what he’d gone through and he realized there are some that have gone through it a lot worse than him. People will have suicidal thoughts but if there is any way that he can create a more sustained culture where people can talk about mental health or that there is less shame associated with stigma surrounding mental health, he is all for it. He feels like it is a very hard thing to tell someone about but that there is nothing wrong with saying the word or bringing it up. He feels that saying the word is not going to give them the idea. “Like if someone is feeling really depressed there is nothing wrong with asking whether they are feeling suicidal. It’s not going to give them the idea.”