Having been generationally touched by the pain of familial mental illness, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at how terribly misunderstood and stigmatised some presentations of it remain this far into the 21st century.
Most families will experience mental illness and 40% of us will suffer from it. Given this prevalence, I was astonished and saddened by the hard-hearted tenor of so much recent public discussion about children who are unable to attend school due to acute social anxiety, depression, neurodiversity or a combination of all and other unidentified factors.
