Hello Tengaged, this won’t be another copy-paste BB22 blog, surprise! Earlier this week was Mental Health Awareness Day and I wanted to briefly talk about mental health on tengaged.com.
EDIT: This blog is not me saying that I or any other tengager is suited to assist you with serious mental health issues. For any professional advice or insight, please contact a professional or use an online resource.
***Trigger Warning - I’ll be talking about mental health / anxiety / suicide on this blog so if that may trigger you, please click off.
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Mental health has been a very personal & important topic in my life. It’s something I had a difficult time maintaining throughout high school personally. However, that isn't something that something unique to just me. Mental health struggles are very common for high school students & young adults. Two of my close friends are survivors of suicide attempts that occurred when the were in high school. At such a young age, the weight of the world can be very difficult to manage.
Looking back at my time in high school, Tengaged was a place to come and escape from reality. It was a fun place to talk with your pals and play a game or two. There were some people on this website who helped me more than they could ever know. However, as many of us know, TG can also be a place of toxicity.
Because everything we do/say is done through a keyboard/screen, it can become very easy for us to dehumanize the people we interact with. It is so easy to send a message through our screens and not worry about how the person who reads that message will react.
One thing that we need to remember, especially when online, is that everyone you interact with has their own struggles in their own life that your words may trigger. “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about”. I fail to realize this commonly but it is very true. I’m certainly not a perfect example of following this rule, but I am trying to be better. Our words can have an impact and cause harm without us ever realizing it. What may seem like a joke to you might have a deeper, harmful impact on the person on the receiver end.
While educating myself on the topic of suicide & mental health, I found a few stats that can be related back to the general public of TG.com. I’m a big numbers person, so I thought sharing some stats as well could help bring this topic to life:
50% of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14, and 75% by age 24
Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among people aged 10-34 https://www.nami.org/mhstats
LGBQ young people are more than twice as likely to feel suicidal, and over four times as likely to attempt suicide, compared to heterosexual youth (Kann 2016); the rates may be especially high for bisexual teens (Marshal 2011). According to one study, a third of transgender youth have seriously considered suicide, and one in five has made a suicide attempt (Reisner 2015). https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/LGBTQ_MentalHealth_OnePager.pdf
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Mental health battles are felt by people of all ages, genders, ethnicities, religions, sexualities, and origins. I focused these stats around a big demographic on TG, the younger members & those in the LGBTQ+ community. Everyone is deserving of love & life, no matter what you or someone else might say. Whatever you are going through with your mental health, it is not permanent. You are never alone.
Music:
Got it In You - BANNERS
You Say - Lauren Daigle
Heavy - Birdtalker
Rainbow - Kacey Musgraves
Who You Are - Jessie J
Get Better - Scotty Sire
1-800-273-8255 - Logic
My Head Gets Loud - Ryan Caraveo
Rise Up - Andra Day
One More Light - Linkin Park
Trying My Best - Anson Seabra
My Time Will Come - Andrew Bloom
Tengagers
If you ever need someone to talk to, please feel free to reach out to me. I can help be a friend, I am not at all saying I am a professional who can offer advice. Sometimes it is just nice to have a friend to talk to & forget about irl issues! If you need serious help, please reach out to a licensed professional.
I can't plus you bc I'm at +0 but yeah
The topic got my attention today bc of a experience I had
It's very sad to see people attacking others in that way and I know most of the times they feel lonely and they just attack others to feel better. Sometimes I don't know how I could help in this case and I don't think I have the strenght to do it all the times. But yeah, that's a question-sentence.
There shouldn’t be so much mental illness in the world. It shouldn’t be so hard just to “exist”. It’s sad. We’re more connected than ever because of social media and the internet yet we still feel alone.
