It makes the person boil down to just their disorder

It’s very important for us to make sure that when someone does come out to the world about their problems, we support and help them. Now everything you’ve read up until now comes to this, a person is not defined by their disorder, it’s not who they are. “Why is that if you break your bones you get sympathy and if you break you brain you get shame and secrecy?” Their disorder is a part of them, but when we use mental illnesses as adjectives in our daily speech, giving it new meanings, reducing its importance and helping create a stigma around it, we’re making the victim believe that they are a part of the disorder when there can be way more to them. Ignorantly or casually misinterpreting the meaning of having a real mental issue adds to it being misunderstood further by others. If a person opens up about the chaos in their head or not depends on how we interpret and understand mental illnesses, if we fail to take them seriously, we fail as anchors to those in need of help. So watch your tongue the next time you’re about to say you’re depressed over a hard set of questions, words hurt, you never know who’s reality you’re squashing.