Mental health is a big deal. Lack of mental health impacts everything in life and more than just the life of the person who has the mental illness. Everyone's mental health impacts everyone's life - good, bad, or indifferent.
When a severe mental illness is left untreated, struggles follow. For the younger people in our society, children and teens, success in the classroom may be sacrificed. Our young adults may lose out on the opportunities successfully earning a college degree will offer them. Job performance may suffer when someone tries to manage his illness by himself. Left to figure it out on their own, some mentally ill people reek havoc in their own lives -- ruining relationships and finances, for example. Sometimes they loose their homes and live on the streets, other times they are caught in the criminal justice system, and then there's suicide.
These things don't need to happen. They are not the predetermined fates of people who live with mental illnesses. Recovery from a mental illness is possible. Very possible. Recovery is not a cure, though. It is a process of managing the illness to allow for a happy, healthy, successful life. Society needs to understand that or at least acknowledge it. Recovery does not happen on accident and it does not happen in isolation. It is a choice and it requires help and support. Peers, friends, family, psychiatrists, councilors, and the healthcare system itself play into successfully supporting a person with a mental illness and facilitating their recovery.
