For a person suffering from mental illness, having someone to talk to that will listen is the best help, a speaker said during a talk for Mental Health Awareness Week on Thursday.

While attending Harvard, mental health awareness expert Hakeem Rahim was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, radically changing his life. Complications with the medications he was prescribed led to weight gain, and he was forced to take a year off from school. But Rahim said after receiving much love, support and acceptance from his family, he was able to finish his education with honors despite the hardship.

“What we are going to do tonight, is we are going to transform,” Rahim said. “We are going to see that it is okay to talk about how you are feeling.”

Rahim said it is important people feel comfortable talking about mental illness and are more open and accepting.

“Ultimately, when we don’t talk about mental illness,” he said, “it robs every one of us of something.”

Rahim cited the World Health Organization’s definition of mental health: “a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.”

A mental illness affects the way a person feels, behaves and thinks, Rahim said. Just being stressed or a little sad, he said, turns into a disorder when it lasts longer than two weeks and starts to affect the activities a person does every day. They don’t enjoy playing sports anymore, he said, they don’t feel like going to class or interacting with friends.

Overall, Rahim said 40 percent of students have felt more than an average amount of stress in the last 12 months. However, he said, 40 percent of students with diagnosable mental health conditions did not seek help.

He said the purpose of the talk was to tell people it is okay to get that help and that there is nothing wrong if someone is struggling with their mental health. One of the main reasons people don’t seek help, he said, is because of the stigma surrounding mental illness.

The stereotypes, Rahim said, are that people suffering from mental illness are crazy people, being dramatic, or just don’t have the capacity to deal with regular life.

Friends should conduct mental first aid by assessing for self-harm or suicidal behavior, and say they are there to listen, Rahim said. Listening, he said, is a key component to helping someone with mental illness.

“It’s really about listening to the person and finding out what they are going through,” Rahim said.

Over 1,100 students die by suicide in any given year, he said, but they don’t want to die – it’s the illness talking. If you give them a listening ear, he said you may save a life, because they didn’t actually want to die, they wanted the pain to go away.

WSU has resources on campus for students who think they may be suffering from mental illness, including Counseling and Psychological Services and Health & Wellness Services.

When talking to someone, Rahim said, don’t think about what they would think about you, think about how you will feel once you get the help you need.

“For me, acceptance means saying ‘It’s okay,’” Rahim said, “We just have to be gentle with ourselves, because we are all going to go through something sometime. “