Thoutober, I am thinking about......

Mental Health

Not a day goes by when there is not something about ‘mental health’ in the media. It is a really important subject but I often think about how we get the conversations so wrong about it.

Today is world mental health day and I think it is worth having a think.

I would like to invite you to think about your and other’s mental health today. I have my thoughts and I will write about them now to start a thoughtversation with you about what is a very hot topic.

The official definition of mental health is this -

A person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being:

Mental illness is this -

A mental disorder characterised by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behaviour:

Mental distress is this -

A state of emotional suffering:

The way that mental health is reported or narrated upon is one that suggests that there needs to be a huge medicalisation of it all. The hospitals cannot cope, the patients do not get the help they need, there is no support and everything is bleak.

What I have discovered through my research, my practice, my talking to real people (not just reporting statistics) is that every single instance of mental illness starts with mental distress.

That a lot of what we describe as mental illness starts with human beings suffering emotionally.

It is important at this stage to also mention that there is no mental health condition, disorder or illness that has a single biological basis to it.

There is the biopsychosocial hypothesis which means that biology, psychology and the social environment all combine to support individuals either into wellness or illness.

The very fact that it is reported that right now there is a mental illness pandemic speaks volumes to me.

I state often that the environment is so toxic, that it does us so much harm and this manifests in numerous guises of ill health.

I want people to start to talk about mental distress.

Stop talking about mental health as that talk is not being done right.

It is victimising, stigmatising and demoralising.

Start talking about mental distress as this can be empowering, unifying and motivational.

Why?

We can all do something about mental distress.

The definition of distress is this -

extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain:

The antedote of distress is this -

care, comfort, soothing, restorative:

I get frustrated when I read about how people are being let down by the NHS, by politicians, by ‘the system’.

Not because I do not agree that they are, but because we should not be relying on them in the first place.

Mental distress should not be politicised at all, nor medicalised.

It needs to be humanised.

The most human of all needs is to be valued. To matter.

When we care, comfort, soothe or restore we are sending a message loud and clear of value.

To stop our mental health descending into mental illness we need to address the mental distress.

Feeling cared for, listened to, comforted, soothed and restored is something we can all aspire to and also give to others.

As individuals those things may mean something different and that is something we can take ownership of.

My soothing may look a lot different to your soothing.

My being listened to may mean a whole different listening to than yours.

My care will definitely be different to yours.

Our differences do not matter though.

What matters is that you know what takes you from distress into calm.

When I see the numbers of children who are now on mental health waiting lists I cannot tell you how angry and sad I am about that.

I see children and they are not ill, they are distressed and noone is helping them understand why this is.

I see adults and they need to realise how distressed they too are.

There is really interesting research about recovery from psychosis in populations who live together in extended families and communities. They have a much better recovery rate than we do in the western world.

I once read a fantastic paper that spoke of mental illness recovery as a journey of healing a broken heart and the metaphor speaks volumes and is extremely pertinent to these times.

Mental illness can be seen in multiple members of a family and it is important to think of the input of the enviornment that is inherant there.

Who is doing the caring, the comfort?

We cannot and should not rely on organisations to do it as they too get caught up in a culture and a system that is not kind, is not caring, does not soothe, does not ease suffering.

We need to take ownership of ourselves and discover what will ease our distress, what we can do to be kind to others and how we can stop medicalising mental distress.

It is not you who is broken because you feel distress, it is up to us all to create a world that is more caring, more compassionate, more thoughtful and kinder.

The real story is not how many people are waiting for mental illness treatment. The real story is why there are so many in the first place.

That is the real bit of investigative journalism right there.

These are my thoughts about mental illness, health and distress.

You will have yours and I urge you to think about them.

You do not have to agree with me. Just have your own thoughts.

They are your own and noone can own them except you.

“Just a glance at the ragged mess around her fingernails communicated more than the lenghiest essays on the nature of distress.”