How mental health affects friendships and what benefits you gain:

How is a friendship beneficial when someone has mental health?:

Any friendship whether you have mental health or not is key in life as this is the key role to survival especially when someone with such severe mental health (I.e may want to kill themselves). Having that one friend even that ONE friend who you can rely on to make yourself feel free from that isolation you’re putting yourself into makes a world of difference. Coming from me someone who has once been in that place. That horrible place that you want to end your life, having that one friend you can talk to and won’t make you feel judged and happy from the ‘real life’. Hold onto them they’re the reason besides your family they are the reason you’re in survival mode. Don’t push them away because you feel an a-burden on them because trust me TRUE friends will be with you regardless through thick and thin. You may feel there’s things your family may not be suitable to hear from their child that maybe your friend could help with! These are the reasons friendships are key in life.

So, how could they affect us negatively?

Firstly carrying on from the positives above that friend you called a ‘friend’ isn’t a friend in fact they have no care in the world. You are just another person on their list to take advantage of. These are some of the reasons friendships don’t last with mental health:

• You’ve now made your friendship circle smaller- either you’ve accidentally pushed that person away OR you’ve realised they were never a true friend.
• You may feel rejection from the outside world.
• You become vulnerable towards social situations and difficult to manage.
• You isolate yourself from all.
• You’ve now connected with people who may understand you more.
• Your friendship was never a friendship- it’s now faded or you’ve drifted away.
• That person may not understand mental health.
• Most importantly you may actually feel unwanted by that person.

The most important questions you need to ask yourself is:

Is this a friendship?

Is it heading towards the end or is it going to be stronger?