In case you didn't know already, Congress has declared this week (October 4-10) as Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW) in order to promote public education about mental illnesses such as major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. 

If mental illness has affected your life in any way I am sure you are already aware.  The question for you becomes not, "Am I aware?" but "How do I survive?"  My mother has schizophrenia, I suffer from depression, some of my friends suffer from Bipolar Disorder, and I worked for a Psychiatric Hospital for many years so I got the awareness thing going on in spades.  I don't think I have lived a day without mental illness being an integral part of my life.  It seems an alien concept for me to think that there are some folk who are unaware of mental illness.  But sure enough they are out there. 

Sometimes I have a knee jerk reaction to the idea of these "awareness" days, weeks, or months to say, "Shoot we just gonna make you think about this for a week and then y'all are off the hook.  You won't have to think about it again until next year."  Meanwhile back at the ranch, people who suffer from mental illness are saying, "This is a 24/7 gig here, I don't know what you talking about, a week."  You tell my mother who suffers from schizophrenia that this is mental health awareness week and she will probably want to know if someone will give her some smokes to celebrate. Other than that she is not going to care a whole lot about it. 

What does "Mental Illness Awareness" mean to the average individual?  That you look at a bunch of cut and paste stats on how many people have mental illness and you say, "Oh I didn't know the numbers were so high, would you look at that?" and then in the same breath say, "I think I am hungry for a ham sandwich do we have any of that special spicy mustard left?"  People just don't take numbers too seriously as they are too easily dismissed as having nothing to do with human beings.  We tend to move on quickly because statistics don't tell us about the real struggles and heartache behind mental illness. 

So what does work to make the public aware of things like Depression, Bipolar Disorder, and Schizophrenia?  We know one way that works like a charm.  I am going to name this method, "Selective Self Disclosure."  Basically it means you share your story about how mental illness has affected your life.  Do you stand on a street corner and yell out, "Hey everybody I am depressed!"  No.  It means you share your story where it is going to make the most difference to others who think they are alone in dealing with mental illness.  It also isn't about some Jerry Springer like confessional where you do it to call attention to yourself for no reason.  It is about taking the stigma out of mental illness by having the regular guy or gal saying, "I have this mental illness and here is how I am coping with it."  It is about enlightening friends and family members who have a loved one with mental illness that there is treatment and hope.  It is about telling the general public who might not know anything about mental illness that mental illness doesn't discriminate.  Mental illness can affect your neighbor, your rich cousin, your Aunt Hilda who lives in England, your boss, or even your child.  The best way to spread this awareness is by sharing your personal experience of dealing with mental illness.