It's pretty common to deeply fear mental illness because we're all secretly afraid of it happening to us. It's the same feeling you get for a homeless person on the street, a combination of empathy and terror at the thought of ending up there.
Yeah, I mentioned this in a reply to to a post that appears to have been flagged (I don't think it should have been, even though I disagreed with it), but I feel like none of us are fully immune from something like this happening to us; all it takes is one bad head injury to cause brain damage, and then all bets are off an how it's going to affect your mental state.
I wish everyone felt like we do. Most people with comfortable (or better) lifestyles who have never endured suffering could never imagine themselves homeless. For the record, I've had as pampered a life as any, but I still empathize with homeless people, especially those who seem to be homeless because of schizophrenia.