I understand the sentiment, but I literally lost all my friends when I had cancer in high school due to a combination of people not knowing what to say or how to act and an abusive boyfriend telling lies to the few that stuck around. The youth pastor at the church I went to wasn’t even comfortable coming into my hospital room
When the treatment is clear and the recovery virtually guaranteed, the support is freely given.
When the problems aren’t visible, the treatment plan is more improvisation than schedule, and recovery is hard to quantify. Support is harder to give and rarer to receive.
Mental problems are more likely to fall into the later bucket, but there are a swath of physical ailments from the metabolic and hormonal to the structural that also get lumped in.
And as someone who struggled with depression, I also wanted to offer the counterpoint that when you are experiencing a depressive episode, you aren’t necessarily going to be receptive to people coming around your bedside and giving flowers and support. It’s a mental state that rejects happiness or even comfort, so while I get the idea behind the comic, it’s over-simplified and not really prescribing anything. We don’t treat physical and mental illness the same, nor should we.
We should understand that they’re both equally real conditions that people suffer from, and need help in treating, but we need to stop giving this ammunition to unwell brains that their depression is part of a narrative where people aren’t going to help you or support you.
People broadly are bad at supporting and helping with mental OR physical conditions, as you outlined. Every time I’ve ever been ill, physical or mental, I’ve had to spend all my time reassuring others and taking care of the emotional states of those worried. This is how it usually goes, when we get sick or injured, we are not going to get helped by others, and managing the way others feel on top of being unwell is just part of the course, we don’t get a relief or break. We won’t get satisfaction no matter what happens, we have to just hunker down and get through it without expectation in others.
I understand the sentiment, but I literally lost all my friends when I had cancer in high school due to a combination of people not knowing what to say or how to act and an abusive boyfriend telling lies to the few that stuck around. The youth pastor at the church I went to wasn’t even comfortable coming into my hospital room
When the treatment is clear and the recovery virtually guaranteed, the support is freely given.
When the problems aren’t visible, the treatment plan is more improvisation than schedule, and recovery is hard to quantify. Support is harder to give and rarer to receive.
Mental problems are more likely to fall into the later bucket, but there are a swath of physical ailments from the metabolic and hormonal to the structural that also get lumped in.
And as someone who struggled with depression, I also wanted to offer the counterpoint that when you are experiencing a depressive episode, you aren’t necessarily going to be receptive to people coming around your bedside and giving flowers and support. It’s a mental state that rejects happiness or even comfort, so while I get the idea behind the comic, it’s over-simplified and not really prescribing anything. We don’t treat physical and mental illness the same, nor should we.
We should understand that they’re both equally real conditions that people suffer from, and need help in treating, but we need to stop giving this ammunition to unwell brains that their depression is part of a narrative where people aren’t going to help you or support you.
People broadly are bad at supporting and helping with mental OR physical conditions, as you outlined. Every time I’ve ever been ill, physical or mental, I’ve had to spend all my time reassuring others and taking care of the emotional states of those worried. This is how it usually goes, when we get sick or injured, we are not going to get helped by others, and managing the way others feel on top of being unwell is just part of the course, we don’t get a relief or break. We won’t get satisfaction no matter what happens, we have to just hunker down and get through it without expectation in others.