diana pressey

Imagine going 20 years without being able to see birds.

It might sound off-the-wall, but that’s how life was for my friend who has obsessive-compulsive disorder before she went on medication. Before I met her, it was disorder I didn’t really know anything about, besides the content of this poem, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

Most people don’t know much about specific mental disorders, unless they or someone they know is affected by them. It’s not something people tend to talk about, and I think that’s a problem. Even though 1 in 5 American adults live with mental disorders, 60 percent of them don’t receive services or treatment, likely due to the pervasive stigmas that surround the topic.

The U.S. has a nasty history of mistreating those who live with these disorders. We’re fortunate to live in a time when awful measures like ice-pick lobotomies and asylums are no longer legal or acceptable. But that doesn’t mean that the way we and the rest of the world treat those with mental disorders is anywhere even approaching okay.

A lot of people lack understanding of mental disorders. They might be afraid to broach the topic, or they might just not care. Those who do care shouldn’t fear bringing it up, after doing some initial reading. All I had to do was ask my friend with OCD about it in an open, nonjudgmental way, and I learned a lot.

My friend didn’t know she had OCD until she was 19, even though her dad has it, too.

“I just thought something was wrong with me,” she told me, shrugging. “No one ever talked to me about it, even though my dad had it. I vaguely knew he had it, but they had never said anything to me about it.”

Her OCD is so severe, it’s basically a medical marvel that she’s gotten to college, according to psychologists in the area. (She really loves to learn.) She’s on medication, but she recently had to reduce the dosage. While the medication does mitigate her symptoms, it also has some nasty side effects–namely weight gain and depression.

She told me that for years, all she saw whenever she looked around was patterns. She’d have to repeat things in her head, and she was so distracted by all the patterns she saw, she never fully was able to perceive the world around her.

Now that she can see everything in nature, she’s a particularly huge fan of birds. It’s amazing to me that seeing birds, something I’ve taken for granted every day of my life, has been something so monumental to her. I feel so privileged that she has opened up to me about this; I’m one of a few.

She doesn’t tell many people. It’s not that she’s ashamed of her OCD or keeps it a secret; it’s more that she knows many don’t understand it and might make assumptions about her. She doesn’t want anyone to jump to conclusions, so she makes sure she’s comfortable with them  before sharing. But the result of this is that she often hears things like acquaintances calling themselves “OCD” when they really just mean organized.

While this annoys her, she’s not all that sensitive about her disorder. When she told me about how she used to wash her hands constantly and “take 10 showers a day”, she laughed about it. When she told me her eating the same thing almost every night was an obsession and I asked if I could still make fun of her for it, she said to keep doing it, because she thought it was funny.

Open communication like this matters. Talking about mental health not only helps those without disorders understand those who have them; it also fosters a more open, comfortable environment so that those who have them feel don’t feel judged sharing their experiences.

There’s no compromising the power of an honest conversation. Mental health discourse is a clear path to breaking down stigmas and myths that elicit shame and prevent people from seeking the treatment they need. And in the case of mental disorders, silence can be deadly.

This is not to say that everyone should obsess about mental health and disorders, but making sure it’s considered less taboo is something that’s extremely important. Had my friend never talked about it, she still wouldn’t be able to see birds and exclaim with delight every time she does.

There’s no doubt about it, in my mind. Avoiding the topic is not an option. We need to talk about mental health.