Question about why my family hides mental health stuff like it's a secret

I had a conversation with my cousin last week after a family dinner in Chicago where she told me our grandma was hospitalized for depression 30 years ago. Nobody in the family ever talks about it, not even in private. I grew up thinking mental illness was something shameful because of this silence. But my cousin said keeping it quiet just made everyone suffer alone for decades. Is hiding mental health problems really protecting people or just making the stigma worse?

2 comments

2 Comments

martin.vera20d ago

You said "keeping it quiet just made everyone suffer alone for decades," and I think that's a pretty strong way to look at it. In my experience, a lot of families keep these things private because they're scared of how people outside the family will treat them. My own brother had a breakdown back in the 90s, and my mother's fear wasn't about him, it was about him losing his job or getting looked down on by the church ladies. Sometimes the silence isn't about shame, it's about giving people a chance to live a normal life without everyone labeling them as "the crazy one" forever.

caseys3020d ago

Yeah but keeping it quiet didn't stop the labeling... it just made sure nobody could get any help or talk about what they were going through. Your brother still had to deal with whatever he was dealing with, just alone and in secret. And what about the next generation? Kids see that and grow up thinking there's something wrong with them too, or that they can't ever talk about their own stuff. I get the fear of church ladies and bosses, I really do, but that fear just hands them the power to decide who gets to be human in public. Silence might give someone a "normal" life on the outside, but it steals any chance of real connection or understanding on the inside.