Mind Your Mental Health
Disclaimer: This article covers matters of mental health, specifically concerning ideation, anxiety, and other manifestations of mental health disorders. If any of these topics are sensitive to your condition or a possible trigger, please read with caution.
On this fall evening on October 13, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we hosted an Instagram Live discussion with mental health advocate Iliana Ortega. Ortega is an Afro-Dominican creative born and raised in New York and the Creative and Cultural Strategist at Publicis.
The session started with some Bachata, Ortega’s beautiful curls, and a brief overview of her experience and passion for mental health management. Ortega openly shared her first encounters with mental health disorders and important tips on managing your mental health, especially as a BIPOC.
Addressing a Lack of Community Support
Ortega’s inspiration for mental health advocacy arose when she noticed a lack of support in her Latinx community related to mental health disorders, causing her to realize the importance of raising awareness for community-based support.
Encouraging mental wellness is often based on an assumption that the person in need of help has the financial ability and time to seek mental help. This is based on deep-rooted ableism, defined as a form of discrimination and inner bias concerning the ability of a person to accomplish something.
If there’s one lesson we can remember from this in-depth discussion, it is to never make assumptions—especially about mental health. Therapy and other mental health resources aren’t cheap. We don’t all have healthcare coverage. Some of us aren’t even aware of resources available to us in our community.
Some of us pay out of pocket for our therapy. Some of us aren’t able to take an “a la carte” approach to therapy. However, if we approach our circle of friends, family, and others close to us, we can form a community-based support system to support those struggling with mental health.
Let’s Destigmatize Mental Illness
If there’s any hope in destigmatizing mental health disorders, we have to unlearn an expansive history of innate ableism.
Ableism leads us to make assumptions. Assumptions about others’ financial position, standards of living, cultural background, ethnic background, or any factors in one’s life.
When initially creating dialogue on mental health, it’s vital to establish boundaries and ground the discussion. You could be talking to a person internally battling mental health disorders, and you’d never know as an outsider. Certain topics can be triggering, hypersensitive, or traumatic to others.
Don’t engage in a discussion on mental health unless the person seeking help initiates.
Don’t Ask What Meds I’m Taking
Before diving into the discussion, Ortega asked the IG Live audience to avoid asking questions on topics such as specific medications she takes, her established mental health diagnosis, and other questions about her treatment.
Asking a person, “Oh, what meds are you on?” is the equivalent of asking a stranger to see their bank account balance, according to Ortega. It’s basic etiquette and human courtesy.
Similarly, when sharing advice on mental wellness and management, don’t give specific recommendations on treatment, therapy, or medications for a person seeking help. Though your heart is in the right place, you are not a licensed physician, nor are you a certified therapist.
Setting Up Your Community-Based Support System
First, identify the people you want in your support system, and most importantly, ask for their consent. In this scenario, asking one’s consent to be part of your support system requires your community member to agree to certain time commitments.
If you’re starting from scratch and building a support system in a new city, you want to pick roles for your friends. One friend could be someone you vent to when feeling anxious. Another may be a friend to hang with when you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Though you may have friends readily available to support you during times of mental health crises, boundaries are important. Everyone has personal conflicts to manage. Trials and tribulations are inevitable in life. Make sure to foster a dialogue with your support system about their availability to support you.
Of course, during particular crises, you won’t always have a game plan. Mental health is ever-changing and evolving. It’s not a static journey; it comes in waves. However, tune in with yourself and be aware of patterns. For those patterns, make a game plan.
If you start breathing heavily when stressed, and your friend agreed to hop on a last-minute FaceTime, make that an established solution. And just like any other activity, practice your plans and constantly re-evaluate their effectiveness.
Do Not—We Repeat, Do Not—Call the Police.
For those who haven’t experienced mental health trials, or supported someone with mental health disorders, a natural fight or flight instinct might kick on. Often, people encounter someone struggling with mental health and resort to calling the police.
Others call the fire department, the hospital, or other first-responders to aid during mental health crises. As Ortega strongly emphasized, don’t call the police on someone struggling with mental health. Often the police approach a person with some sort of mental health disorder and escalate the situation—to the point someone ends up hurt, unnecessarily hospitalized, or even dead.
“Part of being a good community member is giving space and normalizing conversations about mental health,” Ortega shared with us. Normalizing ideation is a good place to start.
Ideation is a thought process related to suicide, in which a person struggling with their mental health imagines scenarios relating to death or reaching a place distant from stressors in their life.
If you encounter someone struggling with ideation, again, Ortega advises to put the phone down. And don’t call 911.
Spoon Theory, Overcommunication, and Moving Forward
It’s a cliché, but mental health is a journey, not a destination. It’s a balancing act, dependent on how you choose to address your inner voice and ableist tendencies.
There are misconceptions concerning mental health treatment, and, as Ortega emphasized, “there is no one-size-fits-all approach.” Everyone is different. Every brain is different. Every heart is different.
A combination of meds and therapy biweekly could work for you, but others may find peace in meditation and holistic practices. There are different avenues you can take that will work best for you, but it’s important to remember that even with the best plan and treatment in place, change will not happen overnight.
Ortega best related this concept to “Spoon Theory.” Spoon Theory specifically relates to those struggling with chronic illnesses—in this case, mental illness. It allocates a spoonful as a unit of energy, or in the instance of mental health, a state of mind. For those with mental illnesses, each day poses challenges and limitations on how many “spoonfuls” we can expend.
Ortega explains that “it’s baby steps with [mental health].” We want immediate results, and we get discouraged when things don’t change overnight. Remind yourself that it’s a process, and that sometimes, you might feel worse than you did to begin with. “Some therapy sessions leave me in shambles. And that’s OK,” Ortega said. It might seem like you’re getting worse before you get better, but it’s really exposing what has already existed underneath the surface.
Closing Thoughts
After an intimate Q&A on navigating support systems and creating dialogue about mental health, Ortega shared: “I think it’s important when you’re on this journey to celebrate the small wins.”
And for Iliana Ortega, hopping on IG Live tonight to open up about mental health with Industry Collective wasn’t just a small win. It was the sense of community we needed. The sense of community to keep us moving forward.
About Industry Collective
Industry Collective connects creative professionals through networking events and digital programming. To stay updated on available resources and events, subscribe to our newsletter.
To watch this IG Live Session in full, follow Industry Collective on Instagram @Industry_Collective and keep an eye out for a list of mental health resources curated by Iliana Ortega.
About the Contributors
Iliana Ortega, a community-centric Afro-Dominican born and raised in NYC, is a vocal mental health advocate and strives to normalize the conversation about what it’s like to live, work and thrive with mental health disorders. As a strategist, she has had the opportunity to work on national and global brands, which has helped strengthen her storytelling and reinforced the importance of creating culturally relevant work, no matter the market.
Her experiences in the 4A’s Multicultural Advertising Internship Program (MAIP) and ADCOLOR Futures program have shaped her voice and helped empower her to challenge the status quo in this industry. When she’s not working to increase access for those from lower-income backgrounds to help push against the classism embedded within advertising agencies, she can often be found deep in thought, trying to understand the symbolism in literature and how that connects to the latest viral meme.
You can find her on Instagram @illywrites.
Cassandra Arrigo-Pastore is a writer and editor based in NYC, passionate about mental health advocacy, work/life integration, and neurodiversity. Born in Arizona and raised in Florida, she received a bachelor’s degree in advertising and public relations from the University of Central Florida, and post-grad remains actively involved in ethical branding and the global advertising space. Aside from her freelance and agency work, you can find Cass at your nearest aboveground train, with the New Yorker mag in one hand and an iced dirty chai in the other.
