To wonder why everyone suddenly has a mental health issue?

[VogueVVague]

Dont get me wrong, im not talking about people who have struggled with long term clinical depression, schizophrenia etc.

But it seems like everyone now has some form of mental issue.

Hey, as a teenager and young adult i was a freaking mess, a teenage runaway, drugs, alcohol, confusing feelings, rage, destruction, depression, fear, shyness sometimes, anxiety. Just thought it was a normal part of transitioning.

Now as a fully formed adult some things still make me feel anxious, mny times i do feel unmotivated, depressed on a kind of existential level, sometimes nervous, sometimes not wanting to do something because it involves big gatherings or lots of strangers, which lets face it, can be awkard and uncomfortable for most people.

Isnt that just life and being human?
It feels like i meet so many people who "have" anxiety or borderline or bipolar. Especially teens. Arent they just experiencing adolescence?

Is social media making us believe the normal default is "happy and relaxed", when thats just one setting and humans are actually also designed to be down or nervous sometimes too?

It can be hard to hear things like that from health professionals. I know it immediately puts me on the defensive if people suggest that I am somehow responsible for the extent to which my life has been impacted, or the lack of recovery thus far. I infer from it that they think I enjoy wallowing in my misery, and am simply choosing to not sort myself out. I take things personally and do concede that I view some treatments in a quite negative way, but I don't think I was always like that. I've just had a lot of disappointment with therapists who weren't really specialised enough.

I hadn't heard the phrase "too much, too fast, too soon", but it makes sense, of course.

That message was to manicinsomniac, obviously.

Violet82 the idea that self-harm is contagious is an interesting and disturbing topic. I believe that some people think the same can happen with eating disorders and gender dysphoria, especially in all-girls schools for some reason. I think teenagers can be so vulnerable, and must be even more so in this age of social media.

We never had it in my day! I am old enough to remember Richey as well; wasn't really into (good) music at the time (was about 12, I think, but quite late bloomer on that score) but I came to love the Manics and they are my second favourite band.

*I know I sound like some cliched grandparent, but can you imagine if some people had had to live through the Blitz?

My uncle was in Dunkirk, the D-Day landings and liberated Germany. He never ever talked about it. But for his funeral he had pre-selected a couple of pertinent poems.

I’m not saying a stiff upper lip is always the right way, but it can get one through rather than be encouraged to relive or dwell on bad experiences.*

My father was a merchant navy officer during WW2. He was torpedoed in the North Atlantic when on a fast independent, served on ammunition ships in the Atlantic convoys and was on the Arctic convoys. He met my mother when his ship had to go into dry dock in South Africa after being sabotaged in the USA. Not long after that, he was hospitalised with an ulcer.

When I was at primary school, he both had a severe heart attack and had to be hospitalised for what was then called a nervous breakdown - oddly enough at the same MH hospital as I attended 15 years later as an out patient. He had no ability to control his emotions whatsoever. I grew up walking on eggshells.

My mother's brother was in the army in the Middle East; he developed schizophrenia in late middle age, living on the streets at one point.

I think there was a lot of MH issues that went undiagnosed because people buried it.

Interesting thread!
I'm more of a lurker than a commentator, but felt compelled with this one!

I think there is a lack of understanding of mental health which can confuse people about what is within the "normal" range, and what is a symptom of mental illness. I think that that can particularly affect young people - just because adolescence is a confusing and emotionally unstable time of life.

I have bipolar II, so severe depression and small amounts of hypomania. I became ill for the first time while at university - and we have no idea why, because I had no trauma in my childhood. I had three major episodes, including one, three-week period of voluntary hospitalisation. I've now been asymptomatic for ten years, and they tell me it's now unlikely to return.(As an aside, I never heard about 'recovered' bipolar people when I was ill, and I feel like I'm in an odd situation, but apparently there are lots of us!)

One of the things I had to learn when I started the long recovery period is the difference between what was normal, and what might be bipolar. It took time for me to understand that I might be feeling truly dreadful, but that feeling was actually appropriate and proportional to the situation I was in, and so wasn't depression returning. I think that that is where other people get confused, too, thinking that they must be depressed when actually, they feel crap because something crap has happened. I felt the difference between "normal" and "clinical" mood most when my mother died unexpectedly last year. I felt awful, but it was a different awful to what I felt when depressed. If that makes sense!

I wish there was more acknowledgement that recovery is possible - it would have given me hope, back in the day. It isn't guaranteed, obviously, and I don't think I'm well because I'm better/stronger/pulled myself up by the bootstraps or anything like that, but it would have been good to know that, for instance, apparently 60%+ people with bipolar disorder lead a completely normal life, without significant illness.

I now find that the label of my illness causes me more problems - because even if I never again have an episode, I will always be someone who is bipolar. I've spent the past five years and counting trying to persuade my dream job to let go of the assumption that bipolar people can't deal with stress or change, so I continue to face the stigma, even though the disorder, as far as I'm concerned, went dormant long ago.

Erm, sorry. This turned out a bit longer than I intended!

Mental illness wasn't spoken about for years it was seen as a bad thing I'm bpd and I find if I trust someone enough to tell them then they avoid u it's ignorant of that person I am what I am i can't change it but I'm not ashamed of it it myt be spoken about alot more but there's still stigma around it I do see alot of anxiety people posts and it's every where I get it people want tips that why ure seeing it all the time

Essay incoming

You know OP, considering some posters called you a goady fucker, this has turned out to be a really interesting and helpful thread. Thank you!

I’m not saying a stiff upper lip is always the right way, but it can get one through rather than be encouraged to relive or dwell on bad experiences.

I think emotional resilience and coping skills should be taught in schools, where people can learn it before they need it, instead of waiting until someone is already in a very bad place and teaching them these things at that point with therapy. Therapy should be available of course but educating kids on mental wellness and how to stay healthy while they’re still at school could have a huge impact.

public discourse at the moment seems to be much more - I have this mental ill health and that is the way it is

Totally agree. In an effort to de stigmatise and Show that mental illness is real and serious, I’ve seen so many campaigns where the subtext is basically saying ‘I have depression and it’s a chronic condition so it’ll never go away you just have to learn to live with it’ and ‘I have anxiety. It’s just who I am, there’s no cure like there is for a broken leg’

Which is the wrong message to send imo, there ARE safe and effective treatments available to improve and manage these disorders, sometimes there are options (the NICE gold standard is either medication or CBT, or the two combined for example). There’s a whole range of really high quality self help materials out there, there is in some areas of the country high quality mental health treatment available via IAPT, who offer a course of therapy for zero extra cost beyond your taxes you’ve already paid. And it’s proven that simple lifestyle changes like exercise have been shown to improve depression.

It’s not easy, and not everyone can recover, but phrasing it as if it’s a death sentence and that’s just that now gives entirely the wrong impression, like you might as well just sit back and accept it. When I got my diagnosis of depression it didn’t come as a surprise to me and I knew there were things we could try and that there’s every chance of this passing. Imagine being eighteen years old and getting the diagnosis when all you know is the current rhetoric mentioned by PP above? You might as well believe you should throw yourself on the trash pile.

I wonder if I approach my mental health wrong or right or just different to how it's portrayed in the media. I see it like a physical illness - I go through a few months of being unwell, do what I can to fight it (rest, medicate, do my "exercises", see specialists and engage in suitable therapies) then when I am over that bout I think no more of it. I've noticed a lot of people on Tumblr Reddit social media in general seem to get a diagnosis and hold onto it as a defining characteristic of their personality.

For instance i would say: I am bumpowder and happen to have periods of being mentally unwell with anxiety, depression and OCD. Whereas you may read: I'm tumblrina and I am an anxious and depressed person who obsesses over everything and can't cope with it.

Really well put, Bum! In some ways I think it’s bad to view mental illness as being identical to physical illness as there’s so much you can do to promote mental wellbeing or tackle it when you have mental health problems. I suppose that goes for health too but I don’t see the comparison as saying that (both mental and physical health are the same, you can improve and influence both), it’s more saying ‘if you had a broken leg you’d go get help and understand you can’t unbreak the leg, why is depression any different?’ I’ve not explained that well!

I think your approach is really helpful, and much more helpful than the latter approach, one of the ways depression can spiral down and get worse is when someone starts an episode and instead of fighting it or being able to fight it they essentially go along with the depression and what it’s trying to get them to do: the less motivated you feel to see people or do work or clean the house or eat or shower, the worse you feel as now you’re isolated, struggling financially, living in a hovel, weak from lack of food or overeating junk and your self esteem is wrecked as you stink and look awful (plus the showering thing is an extra barrier to leaving the house). So you feel worse. So then you’re less likely to do all of those things, and so it goes until your world has shrunk, you feel ineffectual and out of control and like it’s impossible to climb out. There’s a reason behavioural activation is so effective for depression (look it up!).

I see things more in your way too, with a touch of tumblr. For example having had episodic depression for three years now, I know that the statistics indicate that once you’ve had a period of depression three times, your chances of having it again are 99%. so I know it’s likely it’ll come back. But when it does, I am fortunate that I know pretty quickly that’s what is happening, and I start DOING to combat it. I force myself to maintain a routine, keep going to work (that’s the hardest of all) shower every day even if it’s 9pm by the time I manage to motivate myself out of bed, I take antidepressants and do my best to go for walks, put on music that makes me feel less alone and see friends who know about it and will be able to handle seeing me like that. It’s night and day, I go from being a totally happy regular upright functioning person to a zombie who hates herself, thinks everyone would be better off without her and everyone is secretly hating and planning to leave me anyway, struggles to leave the bed, finds the shower even hurts my skin, and eventually I just have on a loop trying to find ways to self harm and not be caught out. It’s hell, but it passes. This is why I think education about MH is so important though: I’m able to fight it and know what is the best thing to do, but if I didn’t I’d be lost. When your depression is telling you to stay in bed it’s very seductive to believe the campaigns trying to get you to be kind to yourself that suggest you call in sick and have a duvet day to ‘be kind to yourself’, you may do that more and more until you’ve unwittingly made the depression much much worse.

Sorry, that was such an essay! I have depression, I am not just depression. It forms part of my life at times but not at others. When I’m fine like right now I find it almost impossible to believe/imagine how low I was only five months ago (most recent episode). I think people who have a mental illness and are still trying their best every day to keep their shit together and combat it are incredibly strong: I wish I could explain How getting a shower feels like the same difficulty as running a marathon when you’re so low but I suspect many reading this know it for yourselves.

bananafish81

I wouldn't describe myself as having depression because I'm not like that. I am just sad. Because I've had a lot of bereavement and health shit and so have had stuff to be sad about. But after 2 years of feeling permanently sad, and not really remembering how to feel happy, whilst also doing weekly grief counselling, meditation etc, my coping strategies were pretty worn out.

I think the telling bit is that you’ve been permanently sad for the two years. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is depression caused by grief (as in the grief kinda split in two into a separate depression you were dealing with at the same time as the grieving if that makes sense). When my mum died I know it was about two to three years before I finally felt out of the woods with the grief so to speak, it was easily that long before the crying jags stopped and the emptiness and sorrow. But in that time I still had many moments of happiness, absolute joy, it was really up and down, whereas if I’d been completely unhappy the entire time I wouldn’t have considered that to be ‘normal’ grieving, perhaps complicated grief. You must have been exhausted. Grief is exhausting even with the ups in the middle. I can’t imagine having survived it if it’d been non stop relentless unhappiness for so long.

When I developed actual depression five years later after the loss of my mum (triggered by another loss but an estrangement this time) the difference between depression and grief was finally so, so obvious to me. With depression I literally couldn’t feel happy or relaxed, there was no solace, no enjoyment to be found anywhere. I would feel shit the whole day worrying about getting in from work and calculating the hours until I could realistically go to bed because when you can’t enjoy anything and feel so wretched minutes feel like hours and you want nothing more than to just be asleep. When my mum died I didn’t get the urge to hurt myself, with depression I really did. When my mum died I would still get up and go about my day, with depression it felt impossible. Now when I’m not depressed you have no idea how much I appreciate being able to get home from work and just relax and enjoy something simple like a nice meal or watching TV, when I couldn’t even bring myself to do those things during depression. It all felt alien.

Everyone’s experiences are very different, by the way, I am glad I developed depression as it’s taught me a lot and until it happened I’d have had no clue how different it is from grief and bereavement, whereas beforehand I’d have assumed they felt somehow similar. Please know my response to you is pretty much just based on my own experiences and I could be way off the mark with it all as relevant to your experiences!

I don't think the people who say they have anxiety when they're a bit anxious, or depression when they are a bit sad, have any idea just HOW PHYSICAL real mental illness is. I certainly didn't.

I agree. I can only speak for depression but for me it was very physical. I had a constant crushing feeling in my stomach dragging me down to the ground, frequent jolts in my chest/heart area as if I had forgotten for a second what was happening then it came back to me. The water from the shower hurt my skin as my skin felt so sore. I’d sleep 20 hours per day if I could and even when I was awake I’d just lie there. I felt it with me every second of the day. When you wake up and for a split second you’re okay then the sinking feeling starts it’s awful.

Thank you OP for this brilliant thread. It has actually helped to answer a question I’ve had for a long time now but didn’t want to ask in case it offended someone. The question being is where do we draw the line between normal ups and downs of life eg depression from a relationship breakdown, anxiety because of impressing exams and when it becomes a medical issue. At one point I was wondering wether I myself might have ‘anxiety & depression’, and perhaps should have seen a doctor. But this thread has now cleared that up.

The idea of it being contagious or copy cat self harm etc is interesting when you think about things like the warnings for 13 reasons why. It seems teenagers will copy what they see even if its self harm and mH issues which is disturbing and tragic.

I am concerned about that too, HansSolo.

I was discussing this very issue with dd, 14, and she was saying she disapproved of 13 Reasons Why, as it makes entertainment out of something that is The End. There’s no heroism and definitely no coming back from suicide. It could give the message that, Wow! I’ll be important and the centre of attention if I do this.

Likewise self-harming, which again is featured in many dramas. It makes it appear mainstream and yeah, everyone’s doing it. Dd said that it was a topic of conversation at school.

irma well done for raising a responsible clever girl. It worries me because when i was a teenager i was in the emo scene and i knew loads of people self harmed to fit into the aethstetic of the sub culture. Teenagers are so vulnerable and it seems lile thats getting worse. 13 reasons why is quiet a terrible program as you say it seems to be glorifying it as the center of attention.

Because people now feel free to talk about it rather then bottle it up inside

Thanks again for your incredibly thoughtful and eloquent responses Walking - I think that's why I would feel like a fraud saying I suffer(ed) from depression, because I wasn't bawling all the time. I was able to function, I mask very well (people at work would always remark on how upbeat and positive I was). I never thought about self harming. I did feel pretty low all the time - but every month was failed infertility treatment, miscarriages, and then the drawn out process of various Drs telling us we'd exhausted all our options and my body could never carry a child, on top of living with chronic pain from a spinal injury (and not being able to work for about a year during treatment when I had to be off all my pain meds and therefore could barely function), plus a cancer scare, and coming to terms with not being able to have children after stepping off the rollercoaster of 2 years of monthly treatment.

I thought, well, I feel really low because I have a fair amount to feel low about! After I lost my mum I coped pretty well, because it was the natural order of things. We are supposed to die - she was taken too soon, but we got to say goodbye, we have wonderful memories, and fundamentally we could move through the stages of grief because we could accept she was gone and wasn't coming back, and the only way was forward. With infertility it's a nightmare you don't wake up from (as a friend put it, it's a very expensive form of self harm), and a constant cycle of hope and hopelessness. Grieving for our lost babies and accepting I can't have children was infinitely harder, because it wasn't the natural order. I can't do what I am supposed to be able to do. I feel lesser than. Broken. A failure. It ripped to the core of my identity. And meant that we'd never have the life we had hoped, dreamed and planned for.

But that's all genuine stuff I think it's legitimate to feel sad about. I don't think it's brain chemistry out of whack - I think it's a prolonged feeling of sadness because of dealing with some pretty sad stuff. I certainly never thought of taking my own life, although I did often think that if I got ill or fatally injured it wouldn't be that bad, because without any dependents I wouldn't have a legacy so really what difference would it make if I wasn't here. But I never thought of acting upon that! It was a thought experiment, nothing more. If I'd have said that to the GP, would they have marked that down as suicidal ideation?!

I wasn't rending my garments or wailing with unhappiness. I just felt crap! It felt like very prolonged grief. Although unlike when I lost my mum I just couldn't focus. I couldn't sit still without any kind of stimulation. I didn't want to be alone with my thoughts because it was just feeling crap all the time, and I felt jumpy and antsy, so preferred the distraction of farting around on my phone or whatever. I didn't want to see people outside work because then I'd have to talk to them, and I couldn't answer the question 'so what are you up to at the moment' when the answer was 'stay in my PJs all weekend and try to avoid having to leave the house'. I had nothing to talk about!

Posters on this thread have rightfully described 'true' depression as being truly unable to function - and as you so heartbreakingly describe, even taking a shower could be exhausting. I guess I just feel like a fraud if I tried to class my experience in the same bucket. Because I was functioning - I was just mentally checked out of life and felt like plodding through treacle. That seems very different to what many on this thread are describing as genuine depression

I didn't want to have to see people because the only thing going on in my life was

(Ignore random copy paste orphan sentence at the end of that post!)

at responsible clever girl! Certain person is grumping around in dressing gown and has just gone back to bed as I suggested an activity for this afternoon might be cleaning the dog’s teeth...

Bananafish81, my sympathies. Situational depression (if that’s a term!) is awful, but it doesn’t seem worth medicating because the situation is still there, nothing is going to change that. My friend who couldn’t have dcs (and her dh left her because of this) had extensive counselling because she envisaged living the rest of her life in a bitter fug.

at responsible clever girl! Certain person is grumping around in dressing gown and has just gone back to bed as I suggested an activity for this afternoon might be cleaning the dog’s teeth...

See clever girl. I would grump back to bed too

IrmaFayLear and banana I agree with you both on that. If a person is going through something like bereavement, financial difficulties, etc that are negatively impacting their life and/or mood, they should be given appropriate advice and counselling to help them deal with the problem or come to accept it. Perhaps a GP should be the first port of call to access some of this help, but I'm not sure medication, and a confirmed or implied diagnosis of an illness, is useful or necessary. It won't magic the situation away.

I do agree WRT to situational depression however for me the last few months of sertraline have been incredibly beneficial. I'd been having weekly counselling for the last few years, and had all sorts of coping strategies.

But the ADs have essentially given me a mental break from the constant gloom to be able to actively engage with how I'm feeling, to come to terms with the situation - and that's been incredibly helpful.

For the first time I'm starting to think that OK, life hasn't worked out how we'd hoped, but that I can now see that eventually WE WILL BE OK.

The problems haven't gone away, but the ADs have given me a break from my own head to be able to process all this shit instead of just feeling too overwhelmed by it all. ADs aren't the magic solution but I do feel like they've enabled me to make progress with dealing with all this shit, to give me headspace to have perspective, so that I hope when I come off them, that I'll be better equipped. If that makes sense?

Perfect sense

I think help offered should be whatever is necessary for each person, but the idea that a diagnosis and prescription should be a first response to a situational or reactive decline in mental well-being doesn't sit entirely comfortably with me.

It's very good news that ADs and other strategies have helped you, banana, and I also think your feeling that you are not a sufferer of the illness depression makes perfect sense.

I suffered depression following a traumatic event when I was about 21. My emotional response was out of proportion (or maybe not, it's hard to quantify) but in any event, was utterly unhelpful. I felt remote from the world, as though there were a physical glass barrier between me and everything else, and I was totally unable to focus on work, to the point that I had to take a break from my degree and re-do my final year. ADs helped me to re-engage with the world and to function enough to have a shower and go to work, even though while I was doing those things I still felt shit. Eventually the fug lifted and I stopped taking the pills when the side-effects started to outweigh the benefits. I think my body told me it was time to stop taking them when they weren't needed any more. I have been well now for almost 20 years.

An awful lot of MH issues are now treatable, Which means ppl can fulfill their potential, do their work as effectively as possible & not lay a heavy burden on their families. Never been so much point in getting a diagnosis. My DM would have said like you: just life. But the whole family had to live with her anxiety. I acted as an informal therapist from age 9 or so. She did a job she hated for years because her anxiety wouldn't let her retrain.
Have good reason to believe my grandmother similarly carried my grandfather. Well at least she was older than 9.
My own dd has similar problems but thanks to medical science is able to live independently, aim for the career of her dreams & not lean too heavily on other ppl.
If you are able to do the same without help, that's great. But don:t assume everybody else is the same. There are too many young carers around as it is.
I also work with young ppl. And seriously prefer having someone asking for help rather than drop out with a heavy debt or trying to kill themselves.

corythatwas I haven't noticed anyone on this thread suggesting that life happens and people in distress shouldn't ask for help. Some people, including me, have been discussing the difference between normal responses to things that happen to a person and how they affect a person's mental well-being, and mental illnesses. I think the former can morph into the latter, if left unchecked to burrow their way into a person. People draw the line in different places and others probably don't consider that there is any difference. It makes for a worthwhile and interesting debate.

Everyone should be able to get help when they need it, but that help doesn't always have to be medical. I believe that diagnosis, especially of common disorders at the milder end of the scale, can be detrimental both to the individuals receiving the label, and people with much more severe symptoms.

I'm glad that your daughter has received/is receiving whatever help was required and hope that her anxiety doesn't hold her back in life.

Not sure if I mentioned this upthread but there is a whole other forum section on here called Menopause. This section and the great website menopausematters is full of women who have anxiety and/or depression (the no.1 peri-menopausal symptom)and are instantly given antidepressants by their GP. It is only when they go to someone more informed they are given a hormone replacement.

There are many women in their 40's and 50's on ADs because their oestrogen and progesterone are fluctuating and this affects the stress hormone, cortisol which causes anxiety.

Flourella, I probably overreacted. Have just been to see my dd who missed big chunk of the HE education she always dreamt of + chance to progress + ended up in some v dangerous situations because of consultant who gave her long lecture on exactly what is being discussed on this thread. Just found out he wrote to dd's surgery recently, to try to block her new referral- a year after he saw her-because he thinks too many young people are snowflakes & can't handle life. Kept insisting it was all about boyfriend trouble just because dd had recently been dumped. Wouldn't listen when she said bf wasn't that important.
Dd now on meds thanks to GP and I can sleep at night.

And then my mum. She also thought ppl ought to be able to handle the ordinary things that happen in life. But I was frightened after my granddad died.
She thought she did the right thing in soldiering on but I was frightened because her grief and anger and occasional paranoia - while they may all have been perfectly normal feelings for a bereaved person to experience - were too much for a preteen to have to handle. A grown-up should have done that. It's what we used to have priests and shamans for. If they are no longer around to deal with this., then there should be other adults whose role it is.