Deciding Whether to Tell Your Friends About Your Mental Illness

If you’re a teen with depression, anxiety, or Bipolar Disorder, then you might wonder on occasion whether or not to tell your friends about your mental illness. You might be concerned about whether they will judge, neglect, or even reject you. It can be a hard decision to make, especially because there is so much attention in adolescence on being accepted among friends. There are some important factors to keep in mind when making this decision. This article will address those and hopefully facilitate the best decision for you.

Deciding whether to tell your friends depends on a variety of circumstances. First, your friends might be the type of people who understand and who will accept you regardless of what you’re experiencing. But you might need to assess whether your friends will be accepting or judgmental towards you. Second, you might need to think about whether sharing this piece of information about yourself will better your friendships or make them worse. Sometimes when a person is going through a difficult time, it can be the very thing that brings a relationship or a friendship closer together. Yet, some teens may not see it as important and may not give too much attention to it. And for some teens, the mental illness might be what places a burden on your friendship. You will have to give this some consideration.

Another possibility is to share your mental illness with one or two of your friends, those you trust, and not everyone. If you feel uncomfortable sharing your mental illness with the whole student body, but you recognize that you need the support of friends, sharing it with one or two people might be the best solution. At the same time, before telling anyone, you might need to write out the pros and cons to sharing a very personal piece of information.

There’s no question, however, that someone with a mental illness can use friends that are supportive and positive. In fact, one study recently found that the good moods of friends are contagious among teens and that the moods of others can actually influence a teen’s mental health. In general, the study revealed that a positive mood seemed to have a greater impact than a low mood, spreading through groups of teens quickly. Depressed moods did not have so much of an influence on other adolescents. The study also found that having many friends who are generally in a good mood can even reduce the chances of that teen developing depression. Furthermore, having many friends who are generally in a good mood can also help double the likelihood of recovering from depression.

But that’s not the only reason to have happy friends around. One of the greatest contributors of recovery from mental health is support. When you know that you are not alone, when you realize that you have people in your life to provide assistance when you need it, bearing with the challenges of a mental illness becomes easier. It becomes more manageable. For this reason, if you decide to keep your mental illness to yourself, it might be worth it to find friends who will support you. There are a number of online resources, such as OK2Talk, that can be a meeting place to find teens who also experience a mental illness.

Whether or not you decide to tell your friends will ultimately be up to you. However, if you decide not to, be sure to find other people who can support you in your experience of mental health.