"Sometimes, when I teach a mental health skill- like how exercise treats depression or how mindfulness is a powerful tool to decrease anxiety, people will tell me “That’s cool, but I have Clinical Depression” and what they usually mean by that is they have been diagnosed with depression, and they assume that that diagnosis means that their depression is a biological trait, a genetic trait, something inherent, a chemical imbalance, part of their being or identity, and they assume is that it’s going to be a permanent characteristic that they just cope with for their entire life. This is a misunderstanding of how mental health diagnoses work. We have this interesting problem in America where we’ve applied the medical model to mental health, and it’s created a lot of learned helplessness. In our attempts to remove the stigma from mental health, many people have come to believe that all mental illnesses are permanent, genetic traits. And it’s just not true. Because anxiety disorders, depression, trauma, and many other mental health conditions are really, really treatable."