To think there isn't a 'new' mental health crisis

[Builtthiscityonsausagerolls]

Was thinking earlier about the reasons why so many people are struggling with their mental health now.

Then it got me remembering Sunday afternoons in the mid 80's with my grandmother, great gran and other matriarch of my family. The men would go to the pub, and the women would sit around putting the world yo rights, and (My great gran in particular ) discuss the health problems of every woman in a 5 mile radius. Phrases I remember
'She has such problems with her nerves' - anxiety
'How are you feeling in yourself?' - are you depressed?
'She has terrible baby blues' - post natal depression.

I also had an ancestor who shot himself after being demobbed after WW1. If you read any memoirs, or even contemporary literature eg Agatha Christie, there are so many casual references to what must have been nearly an entire generation of men affected by PTSD. Going back to my great gran you used to say the Great War 'knocked the stuffing' out of her dad.

You see lots of comments from the unsympathetic 'other generations just got on with it' to the sympathetic 'it's more endemic now

It just made me think. Is it? Or has it always been around we just framed/worded it differently?

Apologies for the typos

I think I agree. I come from a very rural background. I remember a couple of local village families having one member that you never really saw. Often said to have problem with nerves or a problem with the drink.

Both my grandfathers had undiagnosed PTSD from their war experiences; it was evident in their behaviour. This myth of the historic stiff upper lip annoys me, as people have always suffered from poor mental health and have always been subject to the effects of stress.
The causes of stress may change over the centuries, but our brains evolve very slowly. People had breakdowns 2000 years ago, 1000 years ago, 500 years ago…

I agree. People are no different now than at any other period in the past.

There have always been mental health problems. The only possible difference is that we're not so ashamed of admitting it anymore.

My Mum remembers her grandfather sitting quietly in the kitchen by the fire every day. He rarely spoke and never worked. She thinks he was suffering from shell-shock and PTSD following the First World War. Her grandmother had to work to support the family as there was very little help.

I remember reading an article showing a spike in serial killers around 20 years after both wars. They were the children of fathers that had been traumatised in the war and presented it as either being completely emotionally unavailable, or as domestic violence.

And yes 'a problem with the drink' with a knowing nod was another one

Completely agree, my grandad definitely had PTSD from WW2, but nobody knew what that was then, he had no help, my grandma had no support with how to live with this broken man, and my dad & his brother also had to deal with it.

The whole stiff upper lip stuff is BS, people were just expected to get on, that doesn’t mean they didn’t suffer.

My nan was a nurse and when I was growing up (we lived with her) she was often called to various neighbours for emergencies of an evening- drink/overdoses/domestic violence/complete meltdown scenarios. It didn't mean that much to me back then but as an adult I can join the dots. And there was less help available generally. Probably you got a prescription for sleeping pills or valium and were left to get on with it.

YANBU
Nowadays we have better understanding of MH conditions and ways to treat them. It gets spoken about more.
Years ago, no one spoke about it, and a lot of people with MH spent their lives in asylums.... so out of sight, out of mind. I have a great grandparent who died in one... his death certificate cites cause of death as "insanity".
It wasn't until my own MH struggles came to a head, that I found out how many members of my family also had varying degrees of poor mental health. I found out my gran didn't leave her house for 3 years due to agoraphobia. I had no idea.
Saying that, there is a huge mental health crisis now due to Covid/restrictions. My local crisis team have four times the amount of people on their caseload than pre-pandemic times.

I think it’s always been there but there was a lot less understanding and very little help. There was no choice for many but to support affected family members as best they could (and have to suffer the side effects, like domestic violence and alcoholism themselves). And for those affected they just lived miserable lives.

Like PPs, this is why the idea of the stiff upper lip and the current “I don’t know why you’re feeling traumatised over Covid; people were fine during the War!” makes me very angry. People were broken, it was just that there was no help but there was stigma, so they were left to suffer.

I think mental illness has always been around, just think nowadays we lack the community support that our grandparents and my parents generation had.
PTSD and other extreme trauma aside, people can cope with lots of stuff when they have human support. It's the social isolation caused by the way we live today that causes the problems.

I agree. But social media makes it appear much more prevalent. And more time for navel gazing.

@MissAmbrosia

My nan was a nurse and when I was growing up (we lived with her) she was often called to various neighbours for emergencies of an evening- drink/overdoses/domestic violence/complete meltdown scenarios. It didn't mean that much to me back then but as an adult I can join the dots. And there was less help available generally. Probably you got a prescription for sleeping pills or valium and were left to get on with it.

That's Interesting. There are a few bits in Call the Midwife (the books not the TV show) which casually reference mental health problems that I think would have been a much larger part of the 'story' if they'd have been written today

In answer to a few comments
I definitely think social isolation is a big factor today. I can't think of any 'group' I'm in that is the equivalent to those Sunday afternoons of a room full of women freeing themselves up to talk about 'women's problems' (including the nerves, baby blues etc)
As for today, I think the stigma is removed (fantastic) but the health service hasn't caught up with changing attitudes.
The combination of people feeling free to ask for help, plus the lack of community support (this more for women) has just left the NHS playing catch up.

I do wonder sometimes that due to more access to media, be it TV or SM etc that there is an expectation that we should all be happy all the time. That life is somehow better than it was before and we should all be grateful that our kids don't die in early childhood and we have a washing machine etc. Whereas, for most people life IS hard.

Maybe the pressures change - permanent housewife vs working mother trying to juggle it all. Man who can provide for his family vs zero hours contract and has to do more at home so wife can work etc. It's very, very hard to get that balance right so all our needs are met and yet the pressure from outside is that everything is supposed to be wonderful.

Something like Covid comes along and completely smashes everything up.

Just a wee bump as found the responses really interesting

I think we also have different mental health triggers now.

My grandparents grew up in unspeakably abject poverty relative today but had found memories of happy childhood. Social media didnt exist and the whole community was in the same situation, everyone pitched in together and there was no shame around things like periods of unemployment, struggling with the rent etc.

I think social media today contributes to massive issues around anxiety and self worth.

Also I think as a society we don't handle bereavement well now. We have this expectation everyone will live forever and don't cope well when they don't.

I think that SOMETIMES, stiff upper lip is a good approach ie accepting that sometimes, life doesn't go your way and it's best to roll up your sleeves and get on with it as best you can, rather than expecting a rosy, perfect, Instagram world

But now and in the past, many people gave struggled with mental health. It's not new

I think there was a lot of mental health problems related to WW1 and WW2 which as a nation weren't acknowledged. We definitely acknowledge mental health more now, and there is much better meditation. In the '80's there was always some female neighbour or distant relative who "struggled with their nerves". The men seemed to smoke and drink and either stay very quite or be shouty. There did seem to be a lot more low level stress around, probably because it could be easily medicated.

DD has some issues that I recognise as mental health problems and have been proactive in seeking help for her. I had similar issues as a teen, and although my mother was aware, it was never discussed, and I don't think there was help in those day, even if my mother had tried to address my issues.

There have been good times and bad times throughout history, and I imagine during the bad times peoples mental health suffered. At the moment we're not having the best time, and we're aware enough of mental health to recognise more people than usual might be struggling.

I think behaviour that women just wouldnt put up with nowadays was quite normal back in the 1940s and 1950s, basically due to men suffering from things they’d seen in the war. This was then taken out on their children. My dad was regularly given the strap and cane at home and at school and he says they were all taught by masters who had been to war and were basically suffering from PTSD and stress which they would take out on the children.

Maybe the pressures change - permanent housewife vs working mother trying to juggle it all.

This one I always find odd though as the periods in history when working class women have been permanent housewives have been brief relative to those where they have had to work, even with younger children.

The big rise in the number of single person households means more isolation. Growing up in the 50s/60s it was the norm for unmarried adult children to live at home and contribute to the household. We also had local family networks, much rarer these days.

So many people are “struggling with their mental health” right now because it’s the modern trendy buzzword to describe what was called nerves or stress, depending on what time you’re looking at.

Also because we’re going backwards in terms of economy, society and womens rights, and people have every right to be concerned, worried and even angry about that. IMO “Mental health” is a middle class industry currently being pushed both to provide jobs that have otherwise vanished, and push the burden of socially-created issues back on to the individual, delegitimising them and preferably defusing it a little (but that’s secondary) in the process.

Many people really struggled with their mental health, as happens today. The diary of Nella Last (Housewife, 49) illustrates this.

Most of us have family stories of generations gone that struggled with nerves and when you scratch the surface of those stories you find details of significant periods of poor mental health (eg described as a breakdown or similar).

Society has consistently had people with good, bad and average mental health. However serious world events (pandemic and war) cause mental health to spiral in large numbers - with normally resilient people suffering beyond what is bearable normally.