Grading different people with different abilities and disabilities by the same standards is one of the biggest flaws the education system. On that same note we cannot say that all people who have a certain mental illness will all do the same on the same test. Of course there are always similarities between them but in essence it sometimes comes down to the individual, their environment, how they manage it and how severe they might have it.
Many times mental illnesses are surrounded by stigmas created by society about how a person has to be in order to have it and, more often than not, those requirements are either exaggerated or fake. So if you do not meet those requirements you are considered to be making it up for attention or, if you are a student, for extra time on exams and projects.
Students with mental illnesses are often questioned and, sometimes, even thought of lying about their illness when they have excellent grades. Why? Because people usually associate mental illnesses with making you incapable of doing things, and that is not how it works. Having a supportive family and friends, being in the right school program, and your intelligence are all factors that come into how well your grades are.
People seem to think that just because you have good grades you can’t have a mental illness that is generally associated with bad grades.
In some cases people do not even need to be in the special commodities programs that others with the same mental illness have to be because they are not the same person and the way the illness affects their academical response is different. Some students have a really hard time, others might too but they just know how to manage it their own way and some might not have a hard time at all. Whichever the case is it does not give you or anyone else the right to say you do not suffer from a specific mental illness.
There are countless of geniuses who had mental illnesses which did not stop them from revolutionizing our world. Some of the most known are Isaac Newton who was known to have a bipolar disorder and is also the man who formulated the gravitational law, Albert Einstein who was dyslexic and also discovered the general theory of relativity and Charles Darwin who suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder (also known as OCD) who thought of the theory of evolution.
People tend to give opinions on things they know nothing about, specially now days, because of how much the internet has changed our lives everyone is looking for something to comment on. Instead of going around promoting stereotypes that are affecting the way people are perceived educate yourself on how mental illnesses affect people and how they work individually. Next time you want to give your opinion on someone’s mental health save yourself the time because most likely than not they already know how their illness works.
