Most days I feel so depressed I cannot function, day to day activities take a lot of effort for me. However, on the days where my depression allows me some relief I try to educate myself on my illness. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is a wonderful resource. NAMI has local chapters in many areas for help and support. Check out NAMI.org to find your local chapter. No one is immune to mental illness. It can happen to anyone at anytime. Close to 60 million people suffer from some form of mental issues every year (NAMI.org). In college I wrote a paper on depression because I wanted to learn more about it and hopefully learn why this was happening to me. While I researched for the paper I learned a lot about the condition and about all the stigmas out there. I have had people say to me, "just snap out of it" or "you think you have problems, look at me I'm the one that should be depression". Like my pain is somehow less important than theirs and it makes me feel guilty like I have no right to feel the way I feel so I often apologize for it. It doesn't matter if a person is rich or poor, what race they belong to, or if they are male or female. Every person has their own unique set of circumstances and no ones pain is any less than another's. We should not assume that because a person may look like they have everything that they are happy.

Abraham Lincoln once said "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would be not one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better it appears to me" (World Health Organization, 2011).