Mental health is so important and something that should be recognized more than it is. So many people I know suffer from mental health including myself. I have had depression and I still have really bad anxiety. I get anxiety and panic attacks a lot. It’s something I still struggle with and I wish the people around me would take me seriously when I say I struggle with these things. Ever since about middle school I had anxiety but I didn’t know what it was at the time. I just thought something was wrong with me or that I was sick because I would get really nervous and sometimes felt like I couldn’t breathe. I’d always have feelings that something bad was going to happen and everywhere I went I always mapped out a way I would get out if something bad were to happen. I honestly thought I was going insane. My anxiety attacks would get worse and I felt like I was honestly going to die. As I got older I figured out that I had anxiety and I told her. She didn’t believe me and she told that I was fine and made up another excuse as to why I was feeling the way I was feeling. Of course i kept having anxiety attacks all the time and didn’t know what to do because my own mom wouldn’t help me. I felt like I was all alone. As I got older I learned how to calm myself when I was having anxiety. Because I basically had to deal with it all on my own with no help from anyone. Before I started having anxiety and depression I didn’t really understand what mental health was. I mean I had heard about it but couldn’t quite grasp what it was and couldn’t understand why people couldn’t just simply stop feeling that way and why it was so hard. Now that I’ve gone through it myself I understand so much more. Mental health is something that is very real and it affects so many people including some of my family. Mental health affects many people my age now. So many young people experience anxiety, depression, panic attacks, even body dysmorphia which I struggle with myself. It is so much more common nowadays, honestly probably due to social media. Since mental health is affecting so many more people now it is crucial that people actually listen and take it seriously, because it actually is real. Mental health has affected my relationships because I have many friends who suffer from depression or other types of mental illness. My aunt suffered from depression and she had really bad anxiety for a long time to the point where she couldn’t even drive because she would have anxiety attacks. She’s still young only 29 and she had really bad anxiety even worse than me. I know exactly how she felt because I had been there too I know what she was feeling and going through. It made me feel a lot more sympathetic towards her because I know how helpless you can feel sometimes. My experience with mental health has made me want to go into the medical field even more. Knowing that so many people need help and suffer from mental illness and nobody will listen to them. Mental health is something everybody should focus on. Not only is your physical health important but so is your mental health and it should be taken care of as well. If more people were educated on mental health I feel like a lot more people could be helped so that they don’t feel so alone.