I am an Occupational Therapist, and a few years ago I was doing an evaluation on a new patient. As I usually do, I first went to the nurse to get a bit of history on the new lady.  With a look of disgust on her face the nurse snarled, “That lady is crazy.”  She went on to tell me that she had attempted suicide multiple times and was on all sorts of meds for depression and anxiety.  She rolled her eyes and labeled her as drug seeking.  As I headed down to her room, I prepared myself for what I would find when I entered the room.  I had seen it many times before, that patient who can think of nothing other than how to trick the next person into giving them more medication. I wondered if I could trust anything she was about to tell me.  When I walked into the room, the woman looked harmless enough.  In fact, she just looked sad.  I relaxed a bit and began to talk with her about what was going on.  I recognized that hopeless look I saw in her eyes.  My son had died a couple of years earlier and I often saw that exact look staring back at me from the mirror.  At times, I wondered where the old me had gone as I no longer recognized my own face.  As the woman told me her story, she slowly began to trust me and told me she had lost a child.  Her daughter had been killed in an automobile accident when she was only 17 years old.  That would explain the hopeless look, I was seeing.  She went on to explain that just a month ago, she watched as her only remaining child, succumbed to the cancer that ravaged her body at 28 years of age.  Through tears she told me that she just didn’t know if she could survive losing a second child.  We sat and cried together, bound by that unexplainable bond that the deep grief of losing a child instantly forms between two strangers.  As I walked away from her room that day, an anger arose within me.  How quick that privileged nurse was, to judge a woman of whom she hadn’t taken the time to learn anything about.  I went back to the nurse told her why this lady she had labeled as crazy, had attempted to kill herself.  She had lost both of her children and I had briefly considered suicide after losing only one of mine.  This lady was left with none.  So what if she had chosen to avoid ending it all, by going on some medication to stabilize her mood.  Should that not be celebrated rather than judged?  I went on to tell her that if this lady was crazy then I quite possibly was as well and that I was glad she couldn’t understand because I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.  As the stunned nurse stood there speechless, I turned and walked away before I said something I would be sorry for.  May is Mental Health Awareness Month. If you don’t understand how a person can be so hopeless or so tired of an unbearable pain that permeates every second of their life that they would look for a way to make it stop, then consider yourself fortunate. Us “crazy” people were once just like you, but life took a very bad turn and left us in a place we had to learn to navigate without an instruction manual.  Rather than make a quick judgement, take a minute to get to know us.  Who knows, your love may just make the difference between life and death for someone who is desperately trying to remain standing under the unimaginable weight of unbearable pain.