I’ve rarely been so giddy to see an episode of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart* (of which I am an avid fan). The show recently featured Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady, who wrote a book titled Within Our Reach. In the book, Carter explores lessons learned during her 39 years of devotion in the mental health field: recovery is possible for all with mental illnesses and all deserve the opportunity to move forward from illness to lead fulfilling lives.

What I found most encouraging about this was Carter’s passion to promote awareness about mental illnesses. It’s more common than you’d expect– a good 1 in 4 Americans suffer from mental illness, according to Carter.

I prefer to think of mental health as a spectrum (just like she said!) There’s mental wellness and mental illness, and at various times ALL PEOPLE move up and down and around the spectrum. There are times when depressive symptoms are more evident. There are times when anxiety runs rampant. There are times when no symptoms are visible. There are times when psychosis occurs.

Mental health is really much more like physical health, in that matter. We all experience some form of physical wellness, and physical illness. We aren’t afraid to treat our symptoms when we are physically ill– why should we fear to treat our symptoms when we are mentally so?

*[I was going to find a clip of just the interview, but then I decided just to include the entire episode because, let’s face it, Jon Stewart is awesome. But if you just want to see the interview, it starts at 13:45.]

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Filed under: Mental Health Tagged: awareness, Daily Show, health, health care, Jon Stewart, Mental Health, mental illness, physical health, reform, Rosalynn Carter, spectrum, statistics, stigma