SAMHSA says....

"Recent data from SAMHSA indicate that 45.1 million adults (19.9 percent) in the United States had mental illness in the past year. Of those, nearly 20 percent of adults (8.9 million) also had a substance use disorder."

That's a lot of us who are sick. And amazing that there's still such a stigma when it's so ingrained. Imagine, almost 20%. That's (I have no idea, but let's call it) one in 5 people you know has a mental health problem, whether it's post-partum depression or schizophrenia. Look around you. That's a lot of people you know who are either hiding it or disabled by it. And of those people, another one in five has a substance abuse disorder.

Amazing that we still discriminate and have so much stigma against those two illnesses when so many people are affected by them. Imagine, it's not just you who is affected by your depression. It affects your family, friends, co-workers. You can't help but make a difference in other people's lives whether you're trying to or not. So all those people are affected by mental illness and yet we're still ashamed and afraid. Amazing.