Mental illnesses

What are some things people don’t understand about mental illnesses?

1. “Heal naturally, medicines are bad”. No, I actually need my medicines.
2. You don't need some sort of tragic backstory to justify why your brain chemistry is off.
3. Mental illness doesn't discriminate between background, race, or situation.
4. Having a good day doesn't mean I'm not still suffering. It just means I'm suffering less than usual and it's easier to cope.
5. Just because I show up to work every day with a smile on my face doesn't mean my problems are gone.
6. I exercise. It doesn't fix things though. My brain is sick, not my body. Please stop telling me to exercise. Please stop making it sound like a cure.
7. Recovery isn't linear.
8. Just because things are better than before doesn't mean I'm cured. It also doesn't mean that I won't have bad days, or completely relapse.
9. OCD is not just being a neat freak or really organized.
10. People with mental illnesses can look absolutely normal in nearly every way.
11. In fact, there are high functioning varieties of some mental illnesses where you may have known someone for years and not known that they had mental illnesses at all.
12. Depression isn't just being sad.
13. It can have physical effects.
14. It can be when you've stopped brushing your teeth regularly.
15. Or when you've stopped eating normally, or things don't taste as good anymore, or you don't want to eat because of that.
16. When someone with depression says they don't feel like doing something, it's not always they’re lazy. Fatigue is a huge part of it.