HELLO PEOPLE - Mental Diseases are REAL medical conditions!

It is 3:54am, and I read something earlier tonight that has had me awake for hours. And really has me angry. I read several comments about a TV show, and how the person on there was Obsessive Compulsive and how it "bugged/annoyed" them. First off let me say that there is a DISTINCT difference in someone having obsessive compulsive traits and truly being diagnosed with OCD (or any mental illness for that matter.) But I realized long ago, from my own personal experiences with family members or friends, that people are NOT comfortable talking about mental illness. And they are even MORE UN-COMFORTABLE talking with you about yours, or how they feel about it/worries/concerns/etc. If someone is diagnosed with Diabetes, or Epilepsy, or allergies we talk about it, we deal with it, we make people aware of things that can or can't be done around that person/with that person/to that person. When someone has a mental disability/disease if they mention that they cannot do something, people almost laugh, and have to my face personally. WHY does that bother you, why can't you do that. Well heck if I knew that it wouldn't be a problem. "Oh so and so can't have this b/c of their allergies, so let's have this instead." That happens in conversations daily; people are also aware of the toll different diseases take on people emotionally/physically. But when it comes to mental disorders, they don't feel the same way. We can't be upset by something, we can't not do something, we can't, can't, can't. WHAT??? I am just so sick of this attitude. I am going to talk about OCD and the prejudices b/c I know about those personally. People think having OCD is like it is on MONK. That you are neat and quirky, and you like things done in a "certain" way and you are a freak about RULES. There is so much more to OCD, and that show MONK really ticks me off. They make fun of him and his disability, and I refuse to watch it. If you only knew how hard it is to leave a room without things in THEIR place. It is not just "Oh I WANT THEM that way." They have to be that way or I cannot sleep, eat, talk, think. NOTHING. Like right now, something has upset me, so here I sit at 4:04am blogging. I am blogging as therapy b/c I am upset, but at the same time - this is physically exhausting. I cannot sleep, and that happens A LOT. Not this is not all IN MY MIND. Physical things happen to me because of my disease. And yes IT IS A DISEASE, recognized by the medical community. People discuss something around me, maybe nothing that would bother a normal person, but it bothers me. So I ask them to stop, or I won't be able to eat/sleep/whatever. They LAUGH and continue to talk about it. If someone was not able to do something because of their epilepsy would you make them do it knowing it would harm them? I mean GOOD GRIEF. For all the advancements in the world, they might as well still lock us "mental cases" up in a ward, so no one has to deal with our petty little issues since it is all in our head anyway, and we're just "CRAZY." Now these are all OCD things, but people with bi-polar disorder, anxiety, depression, etc. all face these same discriminations. Click on today's post title to see a GREAT article on prejudice and mental illness. And go through the articles in the site, there are several on the left of the page under: "You may also like..." which truly explore the prejudices against mental illness. And remember next time you go to watch MONK or some other show that is making fun of someone's disability - change the channel.