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

Indeed but unless you claim some sort Cartesian dualism everything has a physical explanation. The point is does the physical damage have an impact on how the mind works.

This debate between physicalities and non-physicalities is pointless. Address the situation and problem at hand without going off topic. Everything has a physical attribute as if it didn't it wouldn't exist.

Epilepsy can cause mental illness directly. Same with brain damage (ASPD for instance). It's about the size of the pre-frontal cortex, the amygdala, any part of the brain that co-ordinates a response. Some have larger parts = more activity = increased influence in decision. There can also be more activity in normal sized parts too, from what I've been taught.

mental health doesnt exist.

So depression, PTSD, schizophrenia, BPD, melancholia, etc. are just terms that the 21st century have plucked out of the air, are they? Try telling that to the thousands (if not, millions) of people with mental health problems. Ignorant comments like this just add to the existing stigma surrounding mental health issues, which doesn't help anybody.

well no, it's just your own biases. there are no criteria for it.

You're clearly ignorant so I'm not gonna bother trying to argue some sense into you. I just hope nobody close to you experiences any mental health issues as you seem like the type of person to tell them to just "suck it up" or the equivilant.

I'm sure your opinion on mental health would change if you started feeling really low...

If you had been following the thread instead of just butting in (and for some reason asserting you have the right to tell me what talk about?!) then you would evidently see the importance.