Quote:
Originally Posted by Talthybius
In my opinion, you never tell a friend you have mental illness. Only people that keep medical secrets as part of their profession and maybe blood family.
If they don't have mental illness or have a different mental illness, they will never understand how you feel and the natural reaction will be offensive and come across inconsiderate.
People want friends to improve their own mental health. They want people they perceive to be more mentally healthy than themselves, so that will have a good influence on their own mental health.
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I was going to type a knee-jerk response disagreeing with this but then I was like, no...this is pretty accurate. Because I couldn't think of any of my friendships which were made better by my disclosing my mental illness. I don't necessarily think that extends to serious dating relationships, because I think that someone who is (or might be) getting involved with you on that level has a right to know. But I do tread lightly these days when it comes to my friendships. They know I have some depression issues seasonally, but they don't know the extent of my depression, and no one knows anything about the BPD stuff or anything deeper.