Stop the Stigma: Why it’s important to talk about Mental Health | Heather Sarkis | TEDxGainesville
Heather shines an understanding light in the dark “stigma” of mental health. She provides a unique viewpoint and embraces the immediate need for mental health care. Heather Young Sarkis is a Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner with over 15-years’ experience in different roles within the psychiatric and mental health field. She is a graduate of the University of Florida College of Nursing, and recently graduated from a Fellowship in Integrative Medicine from the University of Arizona. Ms. Sarkis is the co-founder of the Sarkis Family Charitable Foundation, a grass-roots effort with the goal of reducing stigma related to mental illness through community education and engagement. She is also a member of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association and an active member in the Junior League of Gainesville. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
45 Comments
6:23–6:34 WTF
tbh i think we should STOP talking about “mental health” and just earnestly start talking about…. life
Let’s all be part of change What Do You See – Mental Health Campaign by MENTELL Clothing
You are great ..you helped me alot
Malayali undo ivide
Hai kelas D semangat
With a seemingly altruistic agenda, the fact is campaigns aimed at ending the “stigma” of mental illness often have a hidden agenda: they are driven and funded by those who benefit from more people being labeled mentally ill and drugged—the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry. The conflicts of interest with many of these groups is so pervasive that in 2009, a U.S. Senate investigation probed into the nation’s largest mental illness advocacy group, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). The group was asked to disclose any financial backing from drug companies or from foundations created by the industry. It was revealed that in two years alone (2006-2008) the pharmaceutical industry (Pharma) funded NAMI to the tune of $23 million, representing about three-quarters of its donations. NAMI still partners with psychotropic drug manufacturers.
Other groups of concern were Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), and Mental Health America (MHA), formerly the National Mental Health Association, to name but a few.
To everyone who's struggling right now, please know that GOD LOVES YOU. He wants to help you and give you peace. Please surrender your burdens to Him and allow Him to move in your life.
She sounds like she's about to cry. I always feel like crying when I talk abt my mental health so I'd rather not talk abt it to ppl who won't understand bc it makes me even more sad.
Mental illness is not imaginary. I suffered from childhood sleep disorder since 9 years old. It eventually morphed into depression. Now the death of nerve cells in my brain and spinal cord causes partial paralysis, with my (ALS) symptoms, I will eventually die of organs failure.
I HAVEVNEVER DONE DRUGS AND STOP TAKING ALCOHOL FOR MORE THAN 3 YEARS.
This was 2 years ago has any of this info change?
Im not gonna lie she kinda looks like amy
No one:
Me: Stigma balls in your mouth
(But seriously Mental health is not a JOKE)
My father veda prakash is a mental health patient too…now he is not accepting his own illness..say things which are so unreal
I accept patients take some time to accept the blunders or mistakes they have done…ee aarante ammakku praanthu pidichal kaanan nalla chellannu..aa chindhagathi mattannam
When you are sick, what ever you do it is not your mistake
But in case of my father…he drinks alcohol now which I completely object… alcohol, smoking,drugs make matters worse
political government is mental illness
mental illness is political government human will instead of God's will central authority
Don't feel shame. Everyone deserves to be happy, receive help and to recover. You cannot beat mental health illnesses on your own. Receiving help from a professional will help guide you using safe practices and tools. 🥰😘🌈💜💚🌍🙏✝️♥️🖤💗💙🤎🤍
It is easy to judge, difficult to understand
I go to Colorado Technical University, and I have mental illness.
Thank you MUM. This was well presented.
Psychiatry’s Dumbing Down Agenda 101
My Beef against Psychiatry is all about their whole dumbing down agenda where they blame mental illness on peoples minds and create stigma instead of talking about the biology behind mental illness. Shame on them, that is unethical and we should demand better from psychiatry.
I want to thank Ms. Sarkis for her excellent talk on mental health stigma. While her video is almost three years old, it still pertains today and maybe even more vital after the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the last decade, we have made strides in normalizing self-care and good mental health practices. While er have made good strides and continue to improve, the stigma persists. Normalizing mental health is no longer enough, but we need to advance the education patients receive. Education for all patients, even those who do not think they have mental health issues, will encourage them to seek care if needed or even encourage family or friends that need help. Normalizing mental health in a cultural approach is no longer enough, and we need to normalize it in the standard of care. The education of all patients promotes the ethical principle of beneficence. As providers, we must actively provide avenues for our patients to access mental health services instead of looking past these issues. Increasing education is dependent on two key factors access and cost. Access and cost will continue to hamper the wide spread of mental health services because we need more providers and reimbursement from insurance companies. While both have seen improvement over the last few years, we must continue pushing for change at the state and national policy levels. Ultimately health care reform is the only real permanent change that will help increase the number of practicing providers as well as increase reimbursements for mental health services. We need to continue to break the stigma of mental health, as Ms. Sarkis suggests!
It is an interesting topic, thanks to Heather Sarkis for bringing this up. I agree with the speaker that mental health is very stigmatized in our society and honestly, I do not see how it can be changed soon. Mental health looks like an overly complicated issue because it would not be easy to simply “turn off” this stigma in the majority if not all people. I have many stigmas too that would not go away easily and unconsciously I still act on many of them.
Heather Sarki brought good point I never thought about how much we bring this stigma to social media, TV, and movies, and misrepresent these horrifying relationships between mental illnesses and craziness, violence, and aggression. And it is hard to believe we are ever going to stop making these kinds of movies. It is sad that this is part of our entertainment while some people suffer watching it because they see themselves as “crazy monsters,” convinced that this is how other people see them. This is a misinterpretation of the issue and leads us to the wrong judgment of others, fear them and turn our backs on them. Everybody has the right to seek good health for themselves, but I understand why sometimes people would be afraid to go to the doctor and talk about their mental problems because they don’t want extra emotional pressure from feelings that the doctor might judge them.
I am a second-year medical student, and we learned about how complicated the brain is. At the same time, science has stepped forward a great deal and most mental issues can be taken care of, now we can help people with various mental illnesses and give them hope to get their life back, improve their quality, and enjoy every moment of it. When doctors can show that they care with sincerity about patients' mental health and invite patients to be open and trustful, the patients can overcome their fear and be able to receive the care they need. Hopefully, their good examples can be shared with friends and family who also can get the courage to ask for help. And the same can be done with doctors, who can share their skills and experiences on how not to be judgmental and how to invite patients to be open.
This is important that we address this issue because like the speaker said the number of cases does not become smaller, they are growing. I also liked the suggestion that we need to learn to look at the person and not accentuate our attention on their diagnosis, in the end, we are all not so different and we never know if or when a similar problem can happen to us, taking away from us our happy place.
Stop the stigma or stop those declaring it? Stop them they have done enough harm.
Harold A Maio
Every single psychiatric label stigmatizes the person being labeled and as long as we continue to use psychiatric labels (contained within the DSM) to describe behaviors, psychiatry will continue to profit while the public suffers. No psychiatric label, no billing insurance. No psychiatric label, no drug prescribed. So until we stop using these psychiatric labels, which mean nothing other than what some psychiatrists decided was a mental “illness,” we will never stop the “stigma.” The psychiatric labels are backed by corporate interests not medicine, and not science.
Meanwhile, words like crazy, insane, nuts, bonkers, lunatic….are among the most popular in our society!
Mental health either strengthens you or destroy you
❤❤ plz take care of ur mental state
I can’t pay attention to what she’s saying because of the breathing and spit smacking😩
Remember that, eventually. everything is going to be alright. The battle against stigma will always be there.
Brenda okundaye
I applaud her on the delivery of this speech! As someone who’s dealing with a mental illness, it’s great to see some light shed on how little people talk about it. ❤❤❤
Preach sister, may the mental illed ones inherit justice pls cux im 1 of em
Beautiful speech
Applaud her all the way
It’s crazy what’s stigmatized now and what isn’t, if you know what I mean.
tak
Haven’t watched the speech and suspect it’s another overprivliged person discussing their anxiety and depression. Never OCD or schizophrenia. Also, the high rate of mental illness is based on big pharma .
Yeah, I do agree. Mental Health needs to talk more often and need the stigmatisation to stop. It also can kill many people who may are told that "you need to shut up and suffer that person's consequences". Is this a right approach??? I also believe the silent treatment needs to stop. There needs to be more open conversations to groups, and other places that need to have open discussions about what is happening in the family or just yourself or just wanting to talk openly about what is happening in your life without judging others.
Matt
Even if You suffered from seasonal depression now completely cured! try to get a job those monsters will try to stigmatize you so you will get isolated and die IT IS SOCIETY'S FAULT
RIP Heather 💔
RIP Ms. Heather🥺 she helped me, personally ❤
Catagtaguen like here
The current values in our society and the kind of negative vacuum that is created artificially and leads to mental illness.
I had a breakthrough in understanding of many things after watching The documentary The IMPACT. I'd love to hear what Ms Heather thinks about this movie. So many factors that were never taken into consideration are described in detail there… Just shocking! The best documentary I've ever seen, heals my wounds and answers a lot of questions
I dealt with depression years back and you couldn’t tell anyone for fear of being labeled crazy. It’s a far cry from crazy but people make you feel like a leper
Rip❤❤❤❤