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22 DENVER CATHOLIC | JULY 26-AUGUST 8 Perspectives I magine that you live in ancient Rome and you are feeling sad and hopeless. The Colosseum holds no appeal, you have no desire to see your friends, and you just want to sleep. Your physician diagnoses you with melancholia, known today as depression, which is a good start. This diagnosis of melancholia is a more advanced understanding than the centuries-old belief that all mental illness is the result of evil spirits. What Roman remedies are available? Your doctor might prescribe a program of vigorous exercise and playing games with your family, which sounds reasonable – maybe even pleasant – depending on your family. This ancient physician may also prescribe shaving your head and rub- bing it with herb-infused oils, which is less pleasant – especially if you're a woman. Following this guidance, everyone now knows you've got an "issue" because you're walking around bald and smelling of juniper berries! If these remedies fail, the alternatives are much less pleasant: expect to be chained up, starved and fl ogged. Yikes! Physicians continued to advocate restraining and starving patients into the modern age, despite many advances in the understanding of mental illness in the ancient world. Unfortunately, this progress was signifi cantly set back when Western Europe was devastated by famine and plague in the 14th and 15th centuries. Signifi cant religious and political upheavals resulted in a loss of intellectual capital that had been cultivated for hundreds of years. Many authorities reverted to the belief that mental illness was caused by demonic possession. People were "exorcised" with the winning combination of prayer and torture, some- times resulting in death. Many of these ideas, and the accompanying stigma, lingered and migrated with European settlers to the New World – and we have been playing catch-up ever since. Now imagine that you feel those symptoms of melancholia today. Would you talk to a doctor? Would you tell your family or friends? If you feel hesitant to talk to anyone about your experience, it is partly due to history and partly due to human nature. We can thank our ancestors for creating fear that we might be prescribed extreme remedies like being tied up starved and beaten. We can thank our human nature for the desire to fi t in and the very visceral rejection of any sense of diff er- ence or abnormality. People have a deep need to be accepted by those around them, begin- ning with our family. If we are rejected by those who feed, house, and clothe us, we might not survive. Humans are wired to please those around us to ensure our survival. As parents, we want our children to fi t in and be liked by teachers and peers, because we know how important it is to their survival out in the world. The U.S. is a very competitive society that demands complex relationships and behaviors to remain successful. The thought that our children might struggle to be successful in that society can be very frightening to parents, especially when we feel ill- equipped to help them. Fear is a powerful motivator. In the case of getting help for mental ill- ness, the fear of social stigma can leave us paralyzed and unwilling to act. We can change that. Mental illness is a fact of life and we are pro- fessionals who are here to help. Those ancient remedies are long gone. Let's be thankful that we live in a time and place where mental health Resisting the stigma of mental illness DR. MICHELLE CONNOR HARRIS Guest Column Dr. Michelle Connor Harris serves as the Clinical Director for St. Raphael Counseling.