My Heart of Darkness

• One in four adults−approximately 61.5 million Americans−experiences mental illness in a given year. One in 17−about 13.6 million−live with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder.
• Seventy percent of youth in juvenile justice systems have at least one mental health condition and at least 20 percent live with a severe mental illness.
• Approximately 26 percent of homeless adults staying in shelters live with serious mental illness and an estimated 46 percent live with severe mental illness and/or substance use disorders.
• Approximately 60 percent of adults 12, and almost one-half of youth ages 8 to 15 with a mental illness received no mental health services in the 2012.
• Over 50 percent of students with a mental health condition age 14 and older who are served by special education drop out−the highest dropout rate of any disability group. (nami.org, 2013)

The Heart of Darkness I see in 2015 is mental illness. Although I don’t personally suffer from a mental illness, several of my family members do. I grew up around these people.My siblings and I would jokingly make fun of their odd behaviors (we made fun of others too) but no one in my family ever told us that they were coping with mental illness. Even within my family there was a stigma surrounding their illnesses which I could not comprehend. I remained confused about this secrecy until someone much closer to me developed unhealthy behaviors. It wasn’t something I shared willingly with inquirers until a year later, and I never revealed all the information. Even within my immediate family I was not even given all the information. The facts above represent the silent sufferers in our society whose experience is made worse by the oppression of the stigma surrounding their illnesses.

The same way the Congolese people were seen as uncivilized, the mentally ill are misunderstood by the majority of society. Even Marlow who saw a certain amount of humanity in the African natives still did not treat them as fully human, he ignored their sufferings and focused on his work. In the case of mental illness, however, it’s harder for others to see people’s problems; some find it difficult to accept that people live different lives.