How I Use the Horror Genre to Start Conversations About Mental Health and Other Societal Issues
I know what you’re thinking. “How on earth do you use horror to talk about mental health or any other societal issues? Why would anyone even want to?” It’s quite simple really. Mental health in itself is horrific when you think about it, no? I mean, just the fact that we don’t know exactly what’s in the depths of an individual’s mind! Just one small push of a person’s trigger and you end up opening an entire can of worms! You never know what’s the last straw for someone. That’s pretty terrifying, wouldn’t you agree?The point is that while I am in no way justifying the actions of any individual struggling from a mental health crisis, I can certainly acknowledge the horror originating from a person’s mental health status. I can say that I understand and feel for these poor souls because, you see, at some point, I was one of them. Since I was a small child at the young age of about four years old, I was a victim of my own mental health crisis due to constant physical and emotional abuse brought on by my own custodial parent and the emotional abuse paired with neglect by my non-custodial parent. With every passing year, I felt my mental health declining.By the time I was about thirteen, I was essentially afraid of everyone, including myself. I had so much trauma that very often, the smallest thing could push me nearly over the edge, from eye contact to someone expressing any type of disapproval of me, moving too quickly near me, loud tones of voice, or even someone simply asking me how I was feeling. I never knew whether I would start completely bawling, crying enough tears to form a river, react in some sort of extremely cringe-worthy and socially awkward way, or, eventually, totally spazz out from the anger I started to feel from feeling unheard and misunderstood in the many years I spent asking for help from the people closest to me.
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