Our world has changed so much and so quickly over the past fifty years not just technologically but socially as well. Fifty years ago the thought of two people of the same sex getting married was un heard of, the topic of mental health was a taboo subject which everyone believed to keep secret….but now it is encouraged to share our stories. Not only our people sharing their stories with their friends, they are sharing them on a global scale and starting a conversation. Demi Lovato has been an active advocate for mental health for the past few years. When she left rehab she decided to make a change, that it was time for the world to talk about mental health issues, to no longer hide from them. In May of 2013 she released her single ‘Warrior’. …show more content…
In the first few weeks we talked about how mental health is perceived to the general public and the myths associated with the stigma. We later spoke about something that really resonated with me, the CBC broadcast of ‘Off Course on Campus’ which I feel goes hand in hand with the Degree of stress video by CBC. Students are more now than ever stressed out about school, in the survey conducted at Queens University, 90% of students admitted to being overwhelmed and stressed out with school, and of those 1 in 10 of them seriously considered ending their lives. Many of those students admitted that a big part of the reason of why they do not talk about those issues is because of the taboo associated with mental health issues in our society. Which then made me think of the article entitled Prejudice, Social Stress, and Mental Health in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Populations: Conceptual Issues and Research Evidence, the article discusses how being gay use to be viewed as a mental disorder and was listed as one in the DSM. That fact was later removed from the DSM however researchers believed that homosexual individuals were at a higher risk for developing a mental disorder due to the historical stigma associated with homosexuality in past. Clara Hughes sharing her story is just another representation of how we can break down the walls and the stigmas associated with mental health. It doesn’t have to be something we should be afraid of but instead it can be something that we overcome as a society as a team. The article Mental health: a friend, a home, a job explains how important of a role media plays on society and how influential our media is how easily society can be manipulated. But we need to be making smart choices when it comes to what we decide influences us or not. The Consumer Voices article was also very interesting, I loved the fact that there is this online