Any other illness, any other disease that we're faced with

When Chris Wood declared, “Any other illness, any other disease that we're faced with, there's sympathy and understanding. We get help for those. With mental illness, our go-to is to categorize them as, ‘Oh, they're crazy,’ to belittle the problem,” he gave voice to a great injustice of our age. For though the body in pain calls forth the hand of the healer, the mind in anguish too often meets with laughter, with judgment, with scorn. His words unveil the hypocrisy of society: that we comfort the man with broken bones but exile the man with a broken spirit.

The origin of this truth lies in humanity’s long fear of the unseen. For diseases of the body can be measured, touched, and seen with the eye; their wounds bleed openly. But diseases of the mind are hidden, their pain silent, their torment invisible. And what man does not see, he mistrusts. In ages past, those who suffered from madness were cast into chains, locked in asylums, or branded as possessed. Even now, though the world is wiser, the old instinct remains—to dismiss, to belittle, to call them “crazy” instead of seeking to understand.

History offers us a story in the life of Vincent van Gogh, the painter whose genius gave the world sunflowers, starry nights, and visions of eternity upon canvas. Yet his mental illness brought him torment. His works, luminous with beauty, were met with little recognition in his lifetime. Instead, he was often dismissed as unstable, a madman. Few offered sympathy; fewer still offered help. Only after his death did the world awaken to the brilliance of his soul. His story is the very tragedy Wood speaks of: a man whose suffering was belittled when it should have been met with compassion.

The meaning of Wood’s words is not only to expose cruelty, but to call us to greater understanding. For the man who struggles with depression, with anxiety, with voices that torment, suffers no less than the man struck by fever or broken limb. His illness is no less real, his pain no less sharp. To dismiss it with a label is to deepen his wound. True civilization, true humanity, is measured not by how it treats the strong, but by how it treats the suffering.

The lesson is clear: we must change the way we see. To those in anguish of mind, offer not ridicule, but refuge. Speak not the word “crazy,” but listen with patience, as you would to any who suffers. Just as medicine tends the body, so too must compassion tend the spirit. To heal mental illness requires both science and sympathy, treatment and tenderness. Without the latter, even the best remedies lose their power.

What, then, should you do in your life? First, cast away the careless words that belittle suffering. Second, practice empathy when you encounter one who struggles, remembering that their pain may be invisible but is no less real. Third, educate yourself and others, for ignorance is the root of stigma, and knowledge is the beginning of compassion. And fourth, lend your voice to the cause of mental health, that those who suffer may no longer be shamed into silence, but may seek help openly and without fear.

Thus, let Chris Wood’s words echo like a warning and a promise. The warning is this: to belittle mental illness is to betray our own humanity. The promise is this: if we learn to treat the mind’s wounds with the same sympathy and understanding we give to the body’s, we may at last bring healing not only to individuals, but to society itself. And the teaching is eternal: the true measure of love is to lift up the broken, even when their wounds are unseen.