Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography “Born to Run” will reveal many things about the musician and the man known as “The Boss”.  While I already knew about his and his family’s experiences with depression and mental illness, this news may be new to many. Either way, it is profoundly important that he has lent his voice to a topic considered by many to be taboo, too personal, and too uncomfortable to be discussed so publicly.  On the contrary, this is the first step toward addressing a problem facing humanity.  While I cannot speak for him, I believe that he is speaking out about this because not only is it a vital part of who he is, but also because he believes it to be something to be talked about openly, and because he believes he can help others.  This is one of the MANY reasons why this man’s “voice” is so important to me and in general-in so many realms beyond his music.

Mental health is something to talk about openly. Shame only makes it worse. We are all human and no one escapes life’s ills, woes, challenges, and dysfunction of any kind. While everyone faces different challenges at different parts of their lives, everyone faces them at some point.  Regardless of what they may be, if the challenges are related to mental, emotional, and behavioral health, those challenges should be treated equally-with love, compassion, medical care, openness, humility, encouragement, hope, dignity, humanity, and the opportunity to get better, do better, and live a wonderful, happy, healthy, and successful life. God wants that for all of us and to be a messenger on this-just like Bruce is doing by sharing his story in “Born to Run”, through his music, through taking action to help himself, and in so doing, helping others to do the same.  Untreated depression and related illnesses, results in sorrow, loneliness, stigma, anger and rage, drug addiction, love and sex addiction, bulimia and anorexia, obesity, crime, alcoholism, PTSD, hoarding, sleeplessness, financial disaster, broken homes and families, infidelity, cancer-yes cancer, hopelessness, emptiness, God-lessness, unfulfilled promise, and an unfulfilled life. This is not to say that such illnesses are the cause of all of the above, but they certainly should be taken into consideration so that those suffering – have the opportunity to change, fulfill their promise, and live a life that is meant to be lived to the fullest.

Imagine a world where depression was treated the same way as cancer. Imagine a world where a child exhibiting different behavior from what is considered the norm was not treated as a “problem child”.  Imagine a world where families torn apart by such illnesses were given an opportunity to heal and come together again.  Imagine a world where a veteran returning home from the unimaginable violence of war could be integrated seamlessly back into society through a requisite and comprehensive PTSD treatment program.  Imagine a world where violent and non-violent criminals would be given rehabilitative care in conjunction with prison, so that a life might be re-born.  This might be idealistic, and while the promise of such a world might never be completely fulfilled or come near it, I believe we can do a much better job. The first step is to eliminate the stigma of talking about it openly and accepting mental illness as a part of being human. Even that would be one big breakthrough to making this world one “Land of Hope and Dreams”. Heaven and God already is that land, so why not try to do our best in making earth the closest to it, for as many of us as possible – here on earth?