Mental Health In Jenny Lawson's Furiously Happy

Mental illness becomes a bigger issue with a long lasting cultural stereotyped due to the manner in which it has long been labelled (Miles, 1988). Although mental illness is very much connected to instabilities in one’s mental health state, as previously mentioned, a person can be mentally healthy but still suffer from a mental illness. What is understood by mental illness is that it

Society’s stigmas about mental health tell people to bury their issues in the cracks of their house, behind locked doors, and under their floorboards. When dealing with depression, feelings often seem surreal. If one’s secret escapes, society often tells them that what they feel is made up. It is something that exists only in their head. Other times it feels like a demonic spirit is inflicting the pain. Anne Sexton felt possessed by the “Witch” inside her. She thought of her depression as the witch of mental illness, but like witches and elves, it was just a bad fantasy. In the poem “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton, the author writes about the witch inside her and how the voices amongst women with mental illness are buried along with their problems. Using symbolism, imagery, and repetition Anne’s work illustrates the ideas behind depression, society's disbelief, and how women struggling and blatantly misunderstood.

Sylvia Plath wrote a captivating novel following a young girl through her battle with mental illness. In her novel, Plath illustrated the extent of prejudice which society exhibited towards people with metal illness in the 1950's. Like Plath, Susanna Kaysen wrote about the effect of mental illness on the patient's lives. Kaysen also revealed how in the 1950's and 1960's, the unwillingness of society to come to terms with the prevalence of mental illness affected the girls diagnosed. Thus Plath and Kaysen brought to light the issues surrounding mental illness and society's negative views towards those who suffer from psychological issues.

According to the Unite for Sight organization, “In 2002, of the estimated 450 million people worldwide living with mental or behavioral disorders, 90 million were drug or alcohol dependent, 25 million suffered from schizophrenia, and 150 million had depression” (Unite for Sight). Mental illness is something that today’s media and government does not want to address, which is seen repeatedly in “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. More and more people are being diagnosed with a mental illness and this trend needs to come to an end. People need to understand the various aspects of mental illness. While treatment of mental illnesses has improved over time, the effect they have on the individual and the people around them has not.

Author Jane Lee writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, evokes an emotional response within readers from the get-go in true left wing fashion. The doom and gloom heading elicits fear by using bleak words such as ‘lost, fear and dropped’ to describe the future health of young Australians experiencing psychosis.

This essay will focus completely on Mental illness in the UK. To gather my research I used various resources such as websites and books. I have also viewed YouTube videos in order to expand my knowledge. The statistics gathered may not be totally accurate in discussing mental health within the UK for the sources are secondary but it is reliable for giving a view of what the distribution is like amongst gender, age, class as well as ethnicity.

“A Public Feelings Project” is structured as a critical essay containing three chapters. In the first chapter, the author contributes her cultural studies critiques of the medical representation of depression, while finding “new ways to describe feelings or the intersections of mind and body that encompass not just more cognitive forms of emotion but the embodied senses” (26) Cvetkovich then proclaims that depression is “too thin and undescriptive of a term.” (194) She questions the medical model of depression as distraught brain chemistry that is made evident in part through a failure of productivity. As well as including narrative to describe the medical representation, she also includes historical medical studies to find a spiritual crisis

Out of the Blue, a novel written, and published by Canadian journalist Jan Wong, explores an in-depth perception of the truth behind the debilitating disease known as depression and how her career kick started the diagnosis. The book, which is divided into five parts, shares the timeline of Wong’s career, depression and life-style from beginning to end. Out of the Blue covers the good, the bad and the ugly sides of a journalistic career. Its key points definitely aim to crush the wrenching stigma surrounding mental illness along with sharing various coping methods.

Mental illness is a thing that you, very well, have to experience to fully understand. Unfortunately, with that, comes a stigma of extreme instability. Jenny Lawson shattered that stigma in her book, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by displaying the true reality of mental illness through the structure and attitude of the memoir. Jenny has a unique structure to her book that would, normally, not work for other novels; but, it makes this book that much more interesting. She grabs the reader’s attention by putting some funny stories in the beginning of the book.

“A pen is mightier than a sword.” Looks could oppose the aspect of one’s power. Power, in this case, lies within the insightful state of the mind of one’s well-being. Being said, each individual’s mind runs on a different perspective and often battles between optimistic thinking and depression. Susan Sontag draws an inspiring argument that the state of illness is not directly physical, but rather mental by applying the use of metaphors, elaborative explanations, and applying own references and experiences to create an illusion on mental illness.

Mental health is defined as an individual’s optimal care in managing the stress of everyday life, through their own unique approach and can efficiently and successfully make vital contribution within the community they live in (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, 2013). Since a break in a person’s optimal mental state affects not only the individual but society, it is important to understand what it means to have a break in one’s state of mental health and the different categories that is associated with mental illness. Focus will also be paid to why there is a need for the reformation of the mental health act in Canada; the social determinants that is associated with mental health and their contribution to society’s health’s. Finally, focus also need to be placed on how mental health is being promoted to society the stigma generally associated with it.

Mental illness is a taboo subject that has plagued people throughout time. Poet Anne Sexton was one of them. She struggled throughout her entire life, like many others have struggled. She was lost and depressed—misunderstood. Sexton’s childhood was surrounded by abuse. To cope, Sexton wrote poetry to describe her struggle with mental illness. Her verses express her feelings of helplessness as her life plunged into a downward spiral. Sexton poured her heart and soul into her writing, expressing her emotions on paper, resulting in raw, powerful, beautiful poetry. Although Sexton’s life ended prematurely, the impact of her writings on the reader opens a door to discussions about mental illness. It continues to help others cope with their own issues.

Mental health problems are considered to “interfere with how a person thinks, feels and behaves” (Australian Government Department of Health, 2007, para. 3). Considered to be more prominent, yet less severe than mental illnesses, mental health problems are experienced for

“I want to be able to talk to someone in a pub and say ‘I have been mentally ill’ and for them to say ‘That’s interesting, what did you experience?’”, said a survivor from the UK in 1997 (Sayce 18). Almost twenty years later and this man 's wish still has not come true. People may ask why, and the answer is because of the stigma that comes along with having a mental illness. Mental illness is something not often talked about because of the fear of being judged. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in every four Americans has a mental illness, and only about 40% of them seek professional help (Hamid). People are being put into mental institutions instead of getting the help that they need to get better, because even people in the medical field are not understanding about this situation because they do not understand how it feels. The stigma and stereotypes towards mental illnesses are overwhelming, therefore people should be made aware of their impact and take steps to reduce stigma and stereotypes.

It has been reported that the number of people with mental disorder is increasing in our communities at an alarming rate. Environmental and social changes are among the most mentioned causes of the accelerating rate of mental illness in society (Häfner, 1985). Despite the prevalence, about one fifth of the adult population will battle with mental illness every year ("Facts and figures about mental illness," 2014) and the acknowledgement of authorities mental illness is still given less attention then is needed to treat the problem successfully. Health bodies need to be putting more resources into this area as