Mental Illness

I've been doing a lot of research this week about the stigma of mental illness and I came across this article. My angle of mental illness has been that it's just like every other illness, but this article actually discusses the relationship between general medical conditions and psychiatric conditions. I thought this was especially interesting: "a patient with symptoms of depression who has a heart attack is nearly six times more likely to die in the six months following the attack than a corresponding victim who is not depressed, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association." Six times more likely! That's a lot! This is one of those things that seems really obvious now that I've read about it but it is definitely not one of the first things I think about when I think of mental illness. That's just the thing, though. Mental illness isn't just an illness on it's own, it carries the weight of everything else you and your body go through. More reason to end the stigma!