Last night a few friends, including Dan, Thushan and Rohit, had a word with me about my behaviour the day before, commenting inappropriately on the Mental Health thread and not being sensitive and understanding towards other people.
I know that I have apologised late yesterday, but at the time, it was, of course, an attempt by me to dissolve the solution and dissipate the heat moreso than a genuine apology from the bottom of my heart. However, after much thought, including staying up late last night to read about mental illnesses, I now understand how debilitating they can be as well as how much they can negatively affect one's life. And through that understanding, I wish to apologise for my comments yesterday, as misinformed, stupid and just all-round insensitive.
Of course, however, shutting myself up and not making comments is a downstream solution. As a supporter of upstream solutions and solving the cause of the problem rather than fixing the outcome, I'm now trying to read and understand more about mental illnesses and in particular depression and anxiety - two illnesses which I used to think were non-illnesses. I know that if I continue to hold my views and just refrain from commenting on threads relating to mental illnesses, I would just be doing myself and disfavour and hence - I'm now trying to fix the root problem, which is my lack of understanding and past ignorance. That is what I wish to apologise for today - my past ignorance and lack of understanding, as well as my lack of tact yesterday.
However, I also wish to explain that I've grown up in an environment where life is like a mental battlefield, only those who are strong will make it through. I have seen kids in schools where up to 95% of them won't make it to university. I've been in schools where teachers are disrespected and those who want to work and study are outcasted as nerds. I've also seen many students overcome adversities such as heart illness, loss of a close family member as well as socioeconomic issues. Thus, when I went through VCE at GWSC, a high performing and relatively good public school, I was honestly annoyed at anybody who complained about being "stressed out" - because my view was "have a look around you - you have the perfect school to do VCE in and you're complaining about it - show some thought for those who don't have that privilege". I now understand that this view, is also wrong.
Anyway, as atonement for what happenned yesterday, I would like this thread to become a discussion on the causes and origins of stress, anxiety and depression during VCE, not how to deal with them, but the real upstream causes - why they exist in the first place. I think that this is an important discussion to have so that students of the future can walk a different path to graduation.
Cheers for taking the time to read all of that, I genuinely appreciate it and whole heartedly hope that if you were in any way insulted or hurt by my comments yesterday, that you could find it somewhere in yourself to forgive me.
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