Why Hannah Hart Wants To Change The Conversation About Mental Health

Despite the progress we've made in dismantling the stigma around mental illness, we still have a ways to go to get everyone the mental health care they need. Author and YouTube star Hannah Hart knows this all too well, and she wants to change the way that we as a society deal with mental health. Last Friday, Hart sat down with R29 for a Facebook Live interview in which she revealed that she wrote her book, Buffering, to address the problem with how we look at mental illnesses. "The real purpose of the book is to reveal how society has deeply failed those who are mentally ill and those who have disabilities," she told us. "I really wanted to write Buffering to reveal the gaps in the mental health care system." Hart, whose mother suffered from schizophrenia, also discussed how she grapples with knowing and loving those who have mental health crises. If you know someone who suffers from a mental illness, she said, it may be easy to "resent the disease and resent them for that, but you have to remember that they are not the disease." And if you yourself are struggling with a mental health problem, Hart had some pretty touching advice: “You don’t need a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Tomorrow might be the 'someday' that you're looking for."