To be sick of MH problems

[Tiptoearound]

I’m not so inconsiderate that I don’t believe they exist but it seems that nearly everyone I meet has mental health problems, I was married to a man that was in the forces & he seriously suffered from PTSD but now it seems that everyone & his wife has depression/anxiety/PTSD/ADHD & I honestly feel it’s all self diagnosed

I'm not completely unsympathetic to the thesis; I think either living with or caring for someone living with a severe MH problem is so tough and unsupported that it leads to feeling pretty impatient with social media chain posts etc. And the conflation of 'feeling X' with 'having a diagnosable condition called X' is difficult to take.

But I'm afraid I know the stuff about the past is cack. The vocabulary was different but the emotions and experiences, and the disapproval of other people who were disbelieved weren't - read a few novels. And suicide rates are actually much better now, with some deterioration in recent years (my dh took his own life in 2018 after decades of psychosis, anxiety and depression). If greater awareness that it is, yes, normal to have some MH challenges in life but that they ARE MH challenges, is what it takes to get suicide rates down, I'm fine with that.

I do agree that far too many people instantly claim to have "anxiety" as an excuse for, well, anything, including not taking quite elementary steps to improve their situation. People often post on here with some problem that is easily soluble, most notably by actually going and talking to someone, but it becomes insoluble because their anxiety is going "through the roof" at the thought of resolving their problem so easily. For some reason, people like this never just have rising anxiety, it's always going through the roof.

It is precisely because clinical anxiety is a genuine debilitating illness that it is really quite offensive that so many people claim to have anxiety when the reality is that they are being asked to do something they find a little bit difficult or that they don't want to do.

I also feel people forget that feeling anxious is part of life. It’s always been there. Previous generations would have said I’m stressed or worried about something. Anxiety has become a buzz word.
My dd attends CAMHS for anxiety and ocd. The therapist has made it clear that they will try to reduce her anxiety but it will never be totally gone, because anxiety is part of the human experience and can be a very helpful instinct eg: sensing something is not right or danger. They will also work on her reaction/ response to anxiety, to make it more manageable.
So, a certain amount of anxiety is normal and makes us human.
People need to realise, it’s when it becomes all consuming that a clinical diagnosis is reached.

Im all for people minding their mental health and doing things to reduce stress levels or improve a low mood. However, labelling every emotion like a mental health crises belittles those who are actually experiencing the real thing.

I get anxious though. I say to people I can be anxious or have anxiety, but I always say I manage it (with lots of avoidance 😀) . Isn't it the issue of the person on the receiving end that is the problem, assuming it always has to be very severe? I just don't understand why people aren't allowed to have mild illnesses or traits of an illness anymore. Mild issues can still affect your life and give you daily struggles, just not to the extent that its utterly debilitating and you can't function. I just think our culture has shifted to accept that mild issues along with the increasing amount of daily pressures people experience does affect someone's functioning - even if it is mildly - and we need to understand that.

You will always get people feigning illness or making it appear worse than it is. Happens a lot with physical health too though. You can force them not to behave like that. Just don't indulge in it if you have an issue. I do know a few people who have really struggled with MH but are very private about it. I don't say they can't be ill because they don't choose to have a breakdown in front of me.

Probably attitudes like the op is why so many people kill themselves
sad world we living in with all the stresses around like cost of living crisis
working poor
working homeless
the fact you can’t see a gp or it’s v v difficult too
war
covid
brexit

I partly agree with you op.
I don't know if its a good thing or not.
Mental health needs brought out into the open but i still think people suffering badly dont get any actual real practical help.
I think the powers that be like us all talking about it without them doing anything to help us.

MH problems are genuinely extremely common though. The statistic that gets bandied about is that 1 in 4 experience mental health problems each year. Therefore it stands to reason that we all know several people who have one and it feel like it's "everywhere".

In a given year I'm sure many more people will experience a variety of clinically significant physical issues too. Do we feel the need the same need to impose some sort of quota? I think not so much. If someone "self-diagnoses" with migraine, are we equally suspicious of the validity? Again, I don't think so.

So I think this is probably all part of the stigma around mental health problems.

@ashitghost youre right OP doesn’t know what’s it’s like to be someone diagnosed with PTSD but living with someone who has a serious MH condition is really hard and I see what she’s trying to say but she’s worded it poorly. DH has had PTSD and severe MH issues. Living with someone who has that can be hard, you are living with the symptoms in a different way. I didn’t sleep properly for 3 years because I frequently woke to check he was in bed and was breathing and hadn’t done something to harm himself. If I left the house I worried constantly if he would be ok while I got the shopping. I think that qualifies some people to have an insight into the situation.

Normal feelings have now been pathologised so being nervous is ‘anxiety’, being sad is ‘depressed’ - everyone seems to think anything more than a fleeting moment of discomfort warrants a diagnosis and medication.

I think that’s absolutely right. It’s normal to feel stressed before an exam, a job interview or a big presentation. It’s doesn’t mean you “have anxiety”. And it’s not a reason to avoid doing things that are outside of your comfort zone. No one ever learnt anything without trying something new and possibly a bit difficult.

Liking a clean house doesn’t mean you “are a bit OCD”. People who have been diagnosed with OCD often don’t give a shit about cleaning, it’s far more complex than that and it does minimise what having the condition can do to your life.

OP, I agree that bandying around terms like this is unhelpful to people experiencing a normal range of human emotions and damaging to people with actual mental health conditions. Everyone loses.

I get you OP. I have a few diagnoses (BPD, OCD, C-PTSD) and my husband has diagnosed anxiety. These are all real things but it does irritate me when people just claim to have something. My OCD fucked up much of my teenage years (it's still there but I have it under control). It is not the same as cleaning your sink on a daily basis or whatever. My C-PTSD and BPD combined have screwed up relationships, lost me jobs. I've helped my husband through massive panic attacks that come out of nowhere where he's dripping sweat and struggling to breath. Being a bit nervous before a job interview is not clinical anxiety!

Yes I get what you're saying op. If I took every tik Tok video seriously I would have diagnosed myself with loads of things.

How do you know when it is actual anxiety or depression rather than being just a bit worried/sad.

I can barely function. I feel like I'm going insane. I'm suffering from suicide ideation and I hurt myself in an attempt to cope with it. This has been going on for months. But I can't get a gp appointment, the nearest I can get is a phone call from mental health nurse that's booked in for two weeks time.

But no diagnosis (because the gp doesn't want to know) so I guess I'm just making it up for clout 🤷‍♀️

I agree with the OP.
People, especially teenage are just throwing out the words “ I have mental health issues” much more frequently now.
When I ask teens to define it so I can help them it’s usually because they are dreading upcoming exams because they haven’t done enough work!

I don’t think OP is referring to people, like you, who are really struggling. She’s talking about people who label every human emotion as a MH crises.

I have a dd with ocd/ anxiety and a DH going through burn out at the moment, so I get it. I am an anxious person and a worrier but I wouldn’t say I have anxiety, if that makes sense.

You need help. If you can’t get a gp appointment, can you contact a vuluntary/ charitable service? Here in Ireland we have the Samaritans or pieta house who could help. I’m sure there’s UK equivalents.

please, please get the help you need. Sometimes a trip to a a&e will get the ball rolling for you and get you in the system. No one should be be unsupported when they feel like you do right now.

Reach out to loved too, please get some help today 💐

I get it OP, I have Ptsd, depression and anxiety. Now people are self diagnosing themselves with the more complex MH like ptsd, BPD etc when in fact they have depression, which is still shit, but more easily treated via GP routes rather than the MH services which is why we are now struggling so much to be seen.

I have a friend who has been diagnosed with Ptsd via the GP 🙄 and uses it as an excuse for her behaviour.

Same in my family , DM has Bipolar and PD and grandfather has schizophrenia. I get severe episodes of clinical depression. I now feel selfish for having a child as theres definitely some genetics going on there. I won't be having anymore.

You've been quite blunt. But if you mean that the medicalisation of normal human states of mind like sadness, anxiety and worry is leaving too many people (especially young people) unable to build the mental resilience to cope with difficulty, then I don't disagree.

I don't really understand why we don't treat mental health more similarly to how we treat our physical health.

At the moment there seems two very distinct approaches to mental health. The first, seemingly most popular with the young is to align all mental health issues to a disorder, neuro diversity or condition. If you have poor executive functioning and procrastinate then you have ADHD, if you struggle with social situations and have special interests then you have ASD etc. Any form of difference will have some relationship with a diagnosis that you can assign yourself. This is the equivalent of having a cold and declaring you have pneumonia or having a bad headache and saying you have a migraine.

On the other hand there are others that won't accept that people can struggle with their mental health and require support and assistance unless they have extreme issues. They gate keep who should be considered worthy of extra help and minimise what other people are going through. You may have been traumatised but unless you can ascertain a formal diagnosis for PTSD then your issues can be disregarded. If you get anxious a lot and it's debilitating , it doesn't really count unless a professional has said you have anxiety.

My point is, surely we can just accept that when someone says they have issues with their mental health then we should look to support and help them. Irrespective of labels and diagnosis. In the same way that if someone was in excruciating physical pain then we should look to help them even if it isn't connected to a serious issue.

You're definitely being unreasonable. The world is a dark and messed up place, no wonder most people suffer. I can guarantee you that people who suffer are sick of it more than you!.

I have depression/anxiety/cPTSD and ADHD.

All diagnosed. Fuck off.

It’s less dark and fucked up now than it was, say, 100 years ago - when poverty (as in, slum poverty) was commonplace, sexual abuse and paedophilia essentially legal, no safeguarding, jobs which routinely made the employee risk their life for a low wage, pregnant single women locked up. I mean I could go on.

The world is a much better place now, not without its problems obviously, but a million times better for your average citizen of a reasonably developed country.

The difference is rather than appreciate the improvements we focus on the negatives, we have more time to dwell on them and are basically encouraged to do so. I actually think if all our safety nets were removed then people would have less time on their hands to ruminate over ‘feelings’ and ‘identity’ because they would be too busy grafting for survival. I don’t want that to happen - I don’t want people to have to be ‘grateful to be alive’ - but I get tired of these assertions that the U.K. is ‘worse than ever’ and ‘more right wing than ever’. It really isn’t, although financially we’re going through a very rough patch.

surely we can just accept that when someone says they have issues with their mental health then we should look to support and help them.

What does that mean? Medication? Benefits? Therapy? Which is enormously expensive, all at the cost of the state, because somebody says they’re depressed? The bar rightly needs to be high for enormous sums of money to be poured into a person’s mental health, because frankly there aren’t the resources to rush to the aid of somebody having a bad few months. It isn’t popular on Mn but I really don’t believe we have the resources (even if spending was hugely increased) to meet the demand of all the ‘support’ people seem to feel entitled to.

The first port of call if you feel depressed should be focussing on the basics - fresh air, self care, good food and sleep. But now people are encouraged to lie in bed with the curtains drawn, ruminating over their ‘feelings’ because to suggest they might feel better with some personal effort is deemed ‘minimising’.

Again I say this as somebody who was a psychiatric inpatient, but I’ve taken my recovery very seriously and I make every effort to now manage it without dragging others down or needing further intervention. I’ve been given the tools to help myself, it’s now up to me - you have to want to live.

I work in MH and yes, there is an increasing tendency to mix up common day to day difficulties and discomfort with diagnosable conditions. And an increasing number of people who want to use this as a reason/excuse not to do things. We should all take MH seriously. But it devalues to experiences of those with genuine illnesses who mostly just want to manage their MH and live a full life.

@Cuppasoupmonster

I totally agree with both your posts ( and I greatly respect and admire your willingness to discuss this from your own experience).

It's pretty clear OP means that "haha I am OCD so yeah" type who says it when they like towels in certain place and people who just took a online test on Dailymail.

I can't disagree. "I have like ptsd from that" is a new "ocd"