The stigma surrounding mental health is one similar to cancer during the 1960s. Early cancer patients were once uneducated and neglected treatment. It was not until society accepted those with cancer instead of rejection, did those patients seek help. Today, cancer patients around the world seek help at the first possible sight of cancer; while society comforts and houses, hopes and dreams that one-day no one will ever have to experience their as well as their love one's misery. At umttr, a non profit whose mission is to end the silence surrounding mental health, are those with the knowledge to maintain good health. But in turn share and spread the tools to encourage and assist the uneducated and neglected to seek the provided and necessary help they deserve. The direction is there and help is present all as the rate which teens die by suicide increases. As I explored the history of mental instability, recorded personal/peer experiences, and coddled how and why mentally instability leads to solve temporary problems with permeant solutions my knowledge was distorted. To help me and others understand, I created this short story.

 The question that remains unanswered. If help is provided and also necessary, why are ones in need the last and least cared for, why are we, ones in good health only knowledgeable and responsible. We promote good health, we practice healthy habits, and we even sometimes point others towards good health. Let's turn the table, suddenly we feel changes, we feel hopeless, withdrawn from society, and we build enough strength to realize we don't even 

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recognize ourselves anymore. It is never ventures outside but is prevalent; just like our swollen ankle after we broke it. We keep reminding our self, we don't feel normal, we are hopeless, and we've been left by society. We dig our selves deeper and deeper into the dark hole, until we are so deep, so far gone, there is no way out. 

A definition of health has never and will never be solid. Today, 2,416 years after the discovery of the three vitals, a standard concrete definition of health is absent. To this day the longest lasting definition of health or good health was written in 1946 in the Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization; it is as follows, "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" (Preamble). 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), written seventy years ago, we are not in good health. We lack the state of complete mental and social well-being. Absent of diseases, mental or physical, and the outside we seem to be in complete physical shape. But never did we think nor anyone else ask, are we poor in health? How come after seventy years we, the ones in poor health, are unable to recognize it. The question never crossed our mind. Seventy years after a concrete definition of good health is established, we think we can rely on love ones and friends. But they are no where to be found. 

 But we too. We too neglected the provided and necessary help we deserved. We have lived our entire lives an instable definition of good health. Yet even without a mental illness, we too were unable to recognize an unbalanced state of mental and social well-being. Even after we heard it from our self we still repeated: we were worthless, we were hopeless and we did not 

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recognize our change personality or self. Yet we just kept digging: a hole without purpose, without destination, without light and most important, without your self. 

You, you are above that hole. You are not digging the hole; we are digging the hole. We the people you hold dearest to your heart; your family, your friends, your teachers, your peers, your co-workers, your roommates, and your mentors; on a larger scale, your community, society and world all assist in digging our own hole, deeper and deeper. As a society that buries acceptance and emotions, we seal the hole, confining mentally suffering individuals. Only from above can you break the seal. You stand directly above, watching as your life falls deeper, disappearing into darkness. You and only you; await your own destiny; from directly above the hole. You stand with two items: a shovel and a ladder. Would you reach out to save yourself? 

Always remember, umttr. (You Matter)

Another question, weren't we all once above that hole: yourself, unbalanced you, and we as a community or society, how did the hole start? On one side of the table sits those knowledgeable enough to seek the provided and necessary help satisfying the three states of good health; next sits those who are not educated on the provided and necessary help to satisfy the three states of good health; next sits those who neglect the provided and necessary help satisfying the three states of good health and lastly sits those who are knowledgeable enough to seek the provided and necessary help satisfying the three states of good health but in turn share their knowledge with anyone they meet. Once the hole started it grew faster than those 

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knowledgeable enough to seek and share help could keep up with. Eventually entire families, schools, communities, cultures, societies and the world as we know it today; covered then buried: thoughts, beliefs, emotions, openness, acceptance. Left at the bottom is the culture and society we live in today and until some: one, thing, event, organization creates a compassionate culture where every person matters; we continue to dig deeper. 

The stigma will not end with a single event or organization; it starts with creating a positive accepting culture where every person matters. Which then spreads through the world touching and educating every person the advantages good health provides. The first recordings of mental illnesses were in the early B.C era. It is said that there has been "three general theories of the etiology of mental illness: Super natural, somatogenic and psychogenic"(Farreras). Super natural theory believed mental illnesses attributed to the possession by evil, demonic or unsettled gods. Somatogenic theories suggest a physical appearance or function resulting from illness or genetic inherence. Psychogenic theories concentrate on distorted perceptions, false learned associations and cognition or traumatic or stressful situations. From the start of record keeping it is clear that with the knowledge available at the time; one felt a disconnect with an individual that acted or looked different. Further treatment consisted of human skulls with holes drilled through the skull to free the evil spirits that were trapped (Restak). Throughout medical history the rise of Hippocrates is the turning point for medicine and even modern medicine. In 400 B.C Hippocrates made his first attempt at separating supernatural spirits and religion from medicine. With his discovery of the four humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Hippocrates then began to study the human body and discovered with excess or scarce of one of the four humors, was the reason one was ill. It is at the turn of the century and Hippocrates many medical 

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advancements that we see the first societal shift in mental health culture (Tseng). Much like many physicals and philosophers of his time, Hippocrates did not believe mental illnesses were shameful nor did he think they should be held accountable for their actions. It was from then on that mental illness barring families kept their young ones at home and if they were or became mentally ill. They would be cared for by the family and no responsibility lies on the church or state. 


