Mental Health Awareness: the reality.
I've wanted to write for a while on something I feel
strongly about.What I want to talk
about is the value of authenticity in our awareness and
indeed our experience of mental health issues.
Statistics say 1 in 4 of us suffers from mental health
conditions, but of course a huge number of individuals don’t go forward for professional help and thus are left out of the statistics. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that EVERYBODY struggles at some point, mentally and
emotionally, because we are all thinking and feeling human beings in a fragile
and imperfect world. Who of us can say we've not been physically ill before?
Since our brain controls our entire nervous system, indeed everything we do, it
makes sense that we should be prone, as human beings, to suffer at least the
occasional mental blip.
I believe we are at large moving in the right direction in
terms of abolishing the stigma surrounding mental health. But I think, like
anything in life, there are some associated dangers. What I am specifically
alluding to is that it is too easy to become so familiar and comfortable with
our mental health conditions that we
allow them to become our whole identity.
To ‘become’ our illnesses is to escape the ability to live a life that is not entirely
centred on them. It is to take away our capacity for freedom.
I see the term ‘pro-recovery’ used so frequently on social
media and it is so positive to see people breaking free from things that have left
them in chains in the past and supporting others to do the same. But how often is it just a case of using the right lingo and staying in that perhaps
comfortable but unhealthy place of being a Mental Health Sufferer by title, and
how often are we genuinely, authentically
on that path to living a life where our mental health is as healthy as it can
be.
Without this authentic
awareness, we are not stigma fighting at all. I've heard so many inaccurate
assumptions of mental health conditions recently from people whose main
exposure to illnesses like depression, anxiety and eating disorders is through
the new wave of ‘support communities’ on Instagram or Twitter. It is so easy to
get caught up in the addictive hype of these websites that encourage us to
focus on how many ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ you can get. Frankly, posts with
intense anguish, poetic wording and a bit of moody lighting are far more
popular than those celebrating a positive step in recovery or presenting a
frank depiction of how incredibly tough living with mental illness can be.
So yes awareness is incredibly important but without the
right intentions, this can be harmful and also counter-productive. My hope is that
as organisations such as ‘Mind’ continue to fight for Mental Health Awareness
and more people start to be open about their own struggles, we would feel more able
and confident to present our sufferings in an authentic light, knowing we are
not alone in what we are going through. Even if that authenticity doesn't get
you a thousand likes on social media, it’s guaranteed to be a hell of a lot
more helpful for both yourself and anyone else reading it!