Last week, I touched on the growing concern that universities are facing regarding students with mental illness. Being a relatively new concern, it’s hard to compare these kinds of issues to our campus.

Fortunately for my column and its readers, an opportune moment showed itself on Wednesday.

Bacchus/Gamma, in association with the National Alliance for Mental Heath BG chapter, held an event entitled “Erase the Stigma.” This open forum was the brainchild of a student by the name of Jenna, who has held the dream of spreading mental health awareness since the age of 17.

The forum was constructed as a panel, with three University students who have been diagnosed with a mental illness and one doctor from the Counseling Center. Each student was given the opportunity to share their personal story regarding mental illness. Afterwards, the audience was granted a chance to inquire the panel with questions.

Despite the substantial turnout, I feel obligated to share with my readers the stories and experiences of these brave students.

I will start with the story of Megan, a student who has been diagnosed with schizo-effective disorder. This is a disorder that meshes some of the qualities of bipolar disorder with schizophrenia. I have experienced Megan share her story before and am always impressed to hear what she has overcome in her lifetime.

At the panel discussion though, she mentioned a struggle she has faced that deeply troubled me. It concerns the blatant and inexcusable ignorance of several professors that have refused to acknowledge her illness. Mental illness is not a new concept to people and is a known interruption to people’s lives. Those individuals battling to overcome such disorders (such as myself) are displaying tremendous strength and courage by attending college while trying to keep their disorder under control.

Megan expressed the concern that several of her professors would not take her illness seriously when she had to miss a class because of complications from this illness.

Most people suffering from mental illness do not enjoy the torment that it bears upon them. It’s not like these illnesses are being used to encourage truancy.

The thought that a well-educated university professor lacks the common respect to understand the struggle of a student battling mental illness is unacceptable. I can’t even begin to imagine the humiliation and embarrassment that I would feel if a professor ever disrespected me in this way.

I personally enjoyed the next speaker: Jenna who was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder at 17.

The reason I enjoyed her so much was due to the way I was able to connect to her story. Before her bipolar was fully evolved, her diagnosis was major depressive disorder (like mine), and the experiences she described were uncanny. Feeling too miserable, for example, to even lift yourself out of bed in the morning is an experience, I must say, that’s harrowing and frightening on a level that at the time I could barely comprehend.

She also made an important comparison that, I feel, should be enforced to those ignorant of the consequences of mental illness. She said enduring a mental illness is much like enduring a disease like diabetes, except that while diabetes is a physical infliction, mental illness like depression and bipolar affect the mind. Daily medications are taken to regulate them and visits to the doctor are also necessary. And much like how illnesses of the flesh can have complications that place people into hospitals, the same thing can happen to those with mental illness.

Finally, a student named of Rachel shared her story in overcoming eating disorders. She spoke of how it was not about body image and being skinny, how it was not concerning food or weight gain.

Instead, it was about finding her personal voice. In a sense, it was her form of self-expression. Her illness conveyed what she could not convey with words.

After sharing her trials and tribulations she was able to offer valuable advice concerning confronting friends you may suspect of having an eating disorder. She said the best that any friend can do is to simply be there and make yourself available to a suffering friend.

I believe, and this is drawn from personal experience, that an individual’s greatest strength in the road to recovery is a strong social support system. Make that friend aware that you are always there for them. Encourage counseling, but don’t become their personal police force. It’s not helpful to become angry and upset with someone who is already confused about what is happening.

Luckily for me, I have incredible support and understanding from both my friends and family. But support is not everything; it is only one brick on the road that is recovery. And should your friend be placing herself or himself in a life-threatening situation, never hesitate to contact health and safety services that can help.

Mental illness is not the plague, so those who battle it should not be treated as such. Everybody deserves dignity and respect no matter what state their mental stability may be in.

I encourage everyone to get involved, whether that is through attending education events like panel discussions or simply lowering the number of times you use words like “crazy” and “psycho” in your speech. And together, we can help erase the stigma.