Kissed By a Dementor

Dear Friend, I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner, and perhaps you’re wondering why I’m writing now after all this time or why I’m writing at all. Recently on one of my coffee dates with Jiminy Cricket, I brought up the subject of how I’ve officially passed the one year mark since graduating high school. This recent achievement had me wondering whether people who were so instrumental in my high school life would be interested in knowing where I am now, what I’m doing and how I am. I'm writing today acknowledging how far I've come, and after speaking to Jiminy Cricket, I realised writing a letter is the perfect way for not only me to look back on the past year, but for those of you interested. I want to show you that without your support I would not be here today. I'm finally getting to a headspace where I can truly value your role in my life. Whether you met me in year seven or somewhere along the way, if you’re reading this it means that despite my...

I’d like to share an essay that I wrote at the start of the year for Youth Studies, which focuses on how the stigma surrounding mental illness has influenced and continues to influence my personal experience with mental illness.   The stigma surrounding mental illness is one of the major social constructs impacting on the societal understanding of mental illness and affects the way in which individuals with mental illness are perceived and treated (Conrad & Barker). Goffman (1963) classes stigma as “a ‘mark’ that signals to others that an individual possesses an attribute reducing him or her from ‘whole and usual’ to ‘tainted and discounted’” (Pescosolido, 2013). The stigma associated with mental illness in current society, whilst illustrates the social fault lines of a society that produces such prejudice and discrimination, it also is negatively impacting those with mental illnesses. With the prevalence of mental illness in society today, especially promi...