Statistics in 2018 tell us that about 1 in 5 American adults suffer from some degree of mental illness. One in 25 of us is seriously mentally challenged. The question is, are we born with our mental health or are there forces at work to cause us to acquire attitudes that lead to an issue with mental illness.

We have gone from a view of disdain and ignorance with mental illness, leading us to treat the mentally impaired as pariahs to identifying it as a "disease." And while this helped us in addressing the problem with a degree of empathy and remedy or treatment, much like a physical disease, it may have inadvertently led to creating another problem. This problem is unfortunately bigger than a perception of disgust or disdain. We may be discounting the notion of personal responsibility.

Being responsible for our own mental health is indeed possible and probable. While we can not always link our personal responsibility with our physical ailment, we may very likely link our mental health with it.

Looking externally for the cause of our anxiety is really a way to divert attention from our own responsibility to cure ourselves. Emotional Intelligence can be developed within and that means we can have the tools to improve our mental/emotional health for the benefit of ourselves and those in our world.