Stigma can be a significant barrier, with seven in ten believing that society views people with mental health conditions negatively.
One Chattanooga man opened up about his journey, how he found help, and his plan to inspire others to do the same.
“When I was 25 years old, I found out about my father that I grew up with my whole life that I thought was my father by blood wasn’t…I found out about that as an adult,” Iggy Hogans says.
Hogans says the news was initially hard to grasp.
“There is fear of abandonment, there’s neglect, there’s a need to have somebody around because you’ve missed that from the person” Hogans says.
He says he knew this was the beginning of his mental health journey.
“When I got anxiety triggers, or when I felt depressed, or when I felt outside of myself, I never really chalked it up as these mental health things. I just kind of went through it,” Hogans says.
His journey of reading, journaling, and exploring his self-identity led to a broader conversation on social media, through his podcast that opens up about mental health.
“In Tennessee, only two out of ten people that are in active crisis that need help, will seek it,” says Eve Nite with CIT Connect, a nonprofit focused on people experiencing mental health, substance use, or cognitive crisis, says.
She says although that number is seeing progress, the number one reason people don’t seek treatment, is they’re afraid of what their family and friends will say.
“There’s still all of the stigma around having a mental illness,” Nite says. “I think we’ve really struggled in any sort of innovation in mental health for decades. You know, whether it’s the fact we don’t have good medications, we don’t even really understand the cause of mental illness. We’re just now starting to look at the brain,” says Nite.
“More education, more things like this, speaking about openly with different people, is very important to break that stigma,” says Hogans.
Young adults ages 18 to 25 in the U.S. have the highest rate of experiencing any mental health concerns compared to adults aged 26 to 49 years.
According to Forbes, they also have the highest rate of serious mental illness.