Each spring, weather changes cause heavy storms, high winds, and lots of rain, which can lead to tornados. No one is really prepared for severe storms and how they affect the community. The last two springs have caused so much rain that areas were flooded, like Nashville, Tennessee, in 2010.

Being inside a mental hospital during severe weather, with tornadoes being spotted or high winds that could produce one, can be an eventful environment.

As a loud siren sounds and the code blue is called, the staff begin knocking on doors to bring all patients into the tornado shelter. It is a small, confined area away from windows and doors. The patients usually handle the situation without much disturbance unless the code lasts longer than an hour. Then it can become a disturbed situation. Being confined to a small space is claustrophobic for someone without extra voices speaking to them, and anxiety and mental illness to someone and place them in a small space become overwhelming. Not only do you have a tornado going on outside – but you can have one on the inside, too.

Weather has a profound effect on human health and well-being. A change in atmospheric pressure causes changes in mood, focus, and memory function. When a person’s mental status is already challenged, the pressure in the air seems to cause more agitation. Within the hour of code blue being called, several PRNs (as-needed medications) will have to be given for nervousness, agitation, and headaches.

As the weather changes, so do people’s moods. In the winter, SAD (Seasonal affective disorder ) has higher depression feelings than in the spring and the summer when the sun is shining.

Mental illness is like a tornado. When mental illness goes undiagnosed for years, sometimes for generations, it can leave a family in shambles. Abuse, neglect, and broken homes are often the result of psychiatric disorders that have been ignored, denied, or misunderstood for long periods of time. The entire family gets swept up in the whirlwind that can be caused by mania, psychosis, and depression. It’s as if there is a tornado in the living room that everyone can see and feel, yet…..everyone pretends not to notice.

There is a stigma and shame still attached to mental illness in our society. Due to years of misunderstanding and steadfast denial, untreated mental illness has reached ridiculous proportions. Families are affected by it every day. Tornados twirl and dance in houses across the country. Until these disorders are treated as the medical conditions that they are, the twisters will spin on, blowing apart the lives of people right next door to you…maybe even people in your family. It is time to stop the madness.

An individual diagnosed with a mental health condition, no matter how minor in severity, faces an uphill battle against the ignorance of society. Upon exposure to being diagnosed with mental illness, people around them begin to label them and treat them differently. This is one of the main reasons people will not seek help because they do not want to be listed as mental or ‘crazy’.  

Labeling people before you learn who they are and about them is the judgment that can constantly cause a twister to swirl in their lives. Educate yourself about mental illness if you or someone you know has been diagnosed; it is treatable.

This official Tornado Warning has been issued.