People Don’t Realize Mental Illness is a Full-Time Job
No wonder mentally ill people feel overworked — managing a mental illness takes up as much time as a job
Mental health awareness campaigns do a good job of raising awareness around how much mentally ill people suffer. In the past few years, I’ve noticed the difference. People today are much more likely to be understanding and compassionate when I tell them I’m mentally ill than they were years ago. When I was in high school, mental illness was not the kind of thing teachers spoke to students about, but as an adult, it’s acceptable for me to let potential employers know I struggle in office settings due to sensory issues.
What I’ve found these campaigns don’t raise awareness about is how much freaking time it takes.
There is, of course, all the time you lose being sick in the first place. Every hour one spends too depressed to get out of bed is an hour of work not getting done or an hour of time not spent joyfully with loved ones. Every day with a panic attack is not only a day with a panic attack, but it’s also a day with hours spent recuperating from the panic attack.
Then there’s the time it takes for treatment. Therapy 1–3 times a week takes 1–3 hours a week, plus travel time. For me, that’s about 30 minutes each way, so each hour of therapy is two hours of my time (I have therapy 1–2 times a week, depending on the week). Therapists also have a tendency to assign reading assignments and homework, so if you really want to give therapy your best effort, you should budget another 3-5 hours a week for that.
Don’t forget pharmacological treatment. Most people benefit from medication, but to get medication, you need to see your doctor to get the prescription and see your doctor for follow-up appointments. (That’s assuming he doesn’t refer you to a psychiatrist, who must then perform their own assessments as well). There goes another 5–10 hours a month.
And of course, we can’t forget self-care. Everyone can benefit from self-care like meditation and journaling, but these activities are of special significance for mentally ill people. A good self-care routine takes about 1–2 hours a day, involving journaling, meditating, and exercise. Good diet matters a lot, too, and cooking healthy food can take quite a bit of time, so let’s add another 1 hour a day in here.
In case you weren’t counting the hours, being mentally ill is a full-time job.
To make matters worse, therapists and doctors will often tell the mentally ill patient that taking time for hobbies and pleasurable activities is critical for people’s recovery. But most mentally ill people have to work. Getting disability benefits for a diagnosis of mental illness can be a difficult process, and mentally ill people are already overwhelmed by everything else going on in their life; they often don’t have the capacity to navigate the complicated application procedures. So they continue to work full-time, even though it exacerbates their condition because it’s all they know how to do.
Without the medication and the therapy, it wouldn’t be possible for these mentally ill people to work full time. But in between all this treatment, all this homework, medication management, and working, there is no time for anything else. Someone who spends all their time working, going to therapy, exercising, and cooking food may be leading a “healthy” lifestyle, but by that point, their life has collapsed into nothing but working and managing their illness. That’s enough to make anyone depressed.
This is an enormous amount to ask of anyone, so most people don’t do it. They don’t cook themselves healthy meals or exercise, or maybe they skip out on the therapy they need. Yes, they aren’t doing themselves any favors in the long run, and they are more likely to continue to suffer from mental illness, but no one can lead a happy life when their life completely revolves around managing an illness.
But outside observers don’t see all this. They just see someone who’s depressed laying on the couch playing video games, and they think if they would just go to the gym every once and a while instead of laying around all the time, they’d feel a lot better.
Underneath the surface, however, being mentally ill takes up a lot of time. We deserve a break from it too, just as much as anyone else.
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