Why do people at my college not take mental health seriously

This is something that has been bothering me for a while at college (and last night when me and my friends were talking in our group chat) people in my college don't really respect people who have mental illnesses or people who has health issues.

For example one time a girl (who has severe depression) hasn't been turning up to a few lessons , when the teacher asked if anyone knew where she was some other girl thought it would be funny to say "oh she's not in because she's using depression as an excuse to not show up to college" which isn't true at all and quite disrespectful , especially because she doesn't know what the girl who has depression is going through

Another incident was i found one of my friends crying at the back of the library and when i went to comfort him he said he was crying because his friends didn't want to hang out with him because he had severe anxiety and an eating disorder, really felt bad for the guy because it's not something he can easily control.

So how come people don't take mental health issues seriously enough , i wanna hear everyone's opinions , thanks

It's very simple, it's because people in general are stupid. They don't understand, they don't want to understand and they think they'll look good and score points when they say stuff like someone is using depression as an excuse to not show up. I came to this conclusion at 13 and I've never changed my mind, most people are morons and they're not worth bothering with.

I think it's because it's hard to relate to if you don't suffer from it as it's all internal. Everyone goes through sh*t times in life and a lot of people don't take time off when their parents divorce, a relative dies, trouble at home etc. so when Sally with takes a week off because of depression it makes people think 'just pull yourself together'. But yes exactly, no one knows what this person is going through and how bad it is so it can be hard to empathise with them. Sometimes I think also it's because things like 'depression' and 'anxiety' get thrown around a lot these days because of increased awareness so people kind of self diagnose. And then everyone else who has been dealing with depression and anxiety their whole life but didn't know what to call it and continued to get on with life, is just like ?? come on now.

i think there should be a class set aside for this kind of thing , to teach people about mental health/illnesses

i think there should be a class set aside for this kind of thing , to teach people about mental health/illnesses

Have thought about this myself. I think there's the simple reason that physical problems are visible and so people can empathize with that situation. If you've never had a serious mental health issue it's much harder to understand what someone is going through.

There's more to it than that mind but we also should have some optimism over how far we've come in society to how it's viewed. It doesn't help that a lot of pastoral care has been cut from schools due to budget tightening.

I think that would make things worse tbh. Because then everyone will think they have depression when they feel a bit down or anxiety whenever they feel a bit nervous. I don't know if PSHE is still taught in schools but they mentioned it a few times in that. Definitely not enough but bear in mind that was many years ago when it wasn't talked about as much.

Have thought about this myself. I think there's the simple reason that physical problems are visible and so people can empathize with that situation.

Most physical problems aren't visible at all.

Interesting. What would a few examples be?

I guess a more precise term would be easily perceptible problems.

Have thought about this myself. I think there's the simple reason that physical problems are visible and so people can empathize with that situation. If you've never had a serious mental health issue it's much harder to understand what someone is going through.

There's more to it than that mind but we also should have some optimism over how far we've come in society to how it's viewed. It doesn't help that a lot of pastoral care has been cut from schools due to budget tightening.

Hearing impairment, visual impairment, epilepsy, brain injury, etc.

Physical disability is far more than being in a wheelchair.

That's a good point. For me, brain injury/epilepsy would come under mental illness? at least in the sense, they are neurological disorders. But I'm not expert so could be corrected.