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Mental Health And Mental Illness

Decent Essays

“People are afraid to step forward and admit to having a mental illness. Society has made it such a taboo thing to the point where people are afraid to even talk about.” This is what twenty-one-year-old Kaelia Nelson, a pageant queen originally from Hemingford, Nebraska, focused her platform on. She was recently crowned as Miss Alliance, and would have competed at Miss Nebraska in June of 2018. Unfortunately, Kaelia lost her battle against her mental illness. Kaelia was a junior studying education and was involved in numerous activities including being a flyer on the Peru State College cheer team. Mental illness does not have a face. It can affect anyone, even a pageant queen. We have seen countless of stories like these everywhere. We send our love and our prayers to those families whose entire lives have been turned around, but we need to acknowledge mental illness in today’s society and stop the stigma. Mental illness is a serious issue that no one is paying attention to. Many people have been affected, especially young adults, but how many more innocent lives need to be taken before people start to act. Mental health is important, especially in young adults, and it should no longer be ignored. To understand the importance of mental health, we must first recognize what it means. The World Health Organization states that mental health is defined as “a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential and can cope with the normal stresses of

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