To hate the use of 'mental health'

[BarbaraVineFan]

As someone who has mental health issues in their family, this is driving me increasingly mad (pardon the pun!)

Increasingly these days you see people saying or writing 'mental health' when they mean 'mental illness' or 'mental health problems'.

'I couldn't do X because of my mental health'- kind of ok.

'I couldn't do X because I have mental health'- incorrect and increasingly common.

Why is this? Is it because people don't like using the word 'illness'? It is baffling to me!

Part of the problem is that people think they know all about mental health issues because we are encouraged to talk about them and get help etc, severe and enduring mental illness, s are still very much taboo nobody talks about schizophrenia, Bi polar ,schizo affective disorders etc.

Interestingly though you can use it as a possessive like that "because of my mental health" "due to her mental health" and that doesn't jar nearly as much.

Exactly we all have mental health, like we have a physical health!

For most of us our mental health will have bad days (like when we have a cold or flu or sometimes longer like a broken leg etc) it doesn't mean we have mental health issues, that's just life, we don't have physical issues just because we have had a cold! But for some their mental health is a long term condition which needs medication long term.

Talking about emotional intelligence and resilience is needed more for the minor life blips, bad days rather than saying I have mental health issues/ anxiety.

This misuse annoys the fck out of me. It's lke saying 'I have height', or 'I have weight'; meaningless without some kind of descriptor.
Also the insistence that we don't talk enough, (sorry, 'have a conversation', nobody just talks or discusses or debates anything any more!) about mental health....aaaagh!

It does when what they really mean is “because I don’t want to” or “due to her not being arsed”

If the person saying it is talking about their own mental illness or a love one’s and all you can think of is how annoying it is when people use incorrect grammar, then yes, I think it’s unreasonable.

I’m not convinced so much focus on mental health and talking through feelings is that helpful, at least not to the extent it’s encouraged. I say this as someone who in their younger years probably bored people to death discussing how they felt about their various adversities and traumatic experiences, and went along with the notion that the only way to ‘heal’ was to have endless talking therapy reflecting on my abusive childhood was and how shit I felt. I was hoping for a lightbulb moment where suddenly I was healed and I would finally feel it peace, but it never came.

I then decided to give stoicism a try and focus on what I could do rather than what I couldn’t, what I had rather than what I didn’t have. I took responsibility for some of the paths I’d chosen (which was in fact very empowering) and stopped blaming all my problems on stuff that happened 20 years ago. My episodes of depression reduced substantially and overall I’m a hell of a lot happier for it. Talking through all this stuff and having therapists tell me how painful it must have been, how sad it was, what a struggle and so on just reinforced the belief I held about myself that I was broken and beyond repair.

This won’t be true of everyone of course, and there are certainly benefits to therapy (although personally I’m sceptical of the efficacy of certain modalities), but I think the general notion that we must talk about what’s on our mind, everyone should have therapy, let’s delve deep into childhood etc etc regardless of whether it’s having any kind of significant impact on your life is problematic.

It’s a sad fact that many people are increasingly semi-literate. Sad for any fully paid-up pernickety pedant like me, that is. I’m well aware that many people don’t give a shit.

I understood that talking about traumatic experiences can make it worse.

And I believe that all the mindfulness claptrap that is pushed onto children does more harm than good. All that introspection just leads to them feeling there must be something wrong because they are not deliriously happy all of the time.

I agree. Equally irritating is when people describe themselves as ADHD or describe their children as "SEN" ("I'm ADHD and both my kids are SEN" rather than "I have ADHD and both of my children have SEN")

Last time I was in Sainsbury’s a woman had been caught stealing and was screaming that “everyone was being horrible to her and it wasn’t fair because she had mental health”.

The collective eyeroll of everyone there was amazing.

Drives me mad too! Everyone has mental health but some have mental health ISSUES.

agree. I think it's ignorance. I hate it. Alongside people who have DC who 'are ASD/Adhd' etc.

You might be right there!

I find this jarring too. Even more so when it's not actually relevant to the discussion.

Agree! I find this extremely irritating.

I couldn’t agree with you more.
Ive suffered from clinical depression and generalised anxiety disorders when I was younger. Thankfully, as I have gotten older I seem to be able to keep a lid on it more easily. But what has really made all the difference was reading a book called Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier. It’s actually written for parents and teachers in the context of childhood and adolescent mental health disorders but it actually had a profound effect on me.
The main take aways being that it’s not always healthy to be analysing your thoughts, feelings and emotions all the time. That you don’t always have to take them too seriously and that there is very little difference between rumination/introspection and anxiety. That sometimes, the old ‘shake it off and carry on’ actually DOES work. I’m a little tougher on myself now but in a good way. I’m more likely to say “come on woman, snap out of it and go and do something productive” which makes me feel better.

This book looks very interesting, I feel validated I've added it to my 'to read' list.

I think the intense focus on mental health and emotional wellbeing can be especially problematic in developing brains, particularly in combination with the mood swings of adolescence. IMO it promotes a victim mentality, and I think there's a risk of this mentality ingraining itself into young people's personalities during the period where the personality is still developing and at its most malleable.

Things like 'having anxiety' and 'having depression' can end up becoming part of an identity rather than transient unpleasant but entirely normal feelings that are part of the human experience and that can be endured and independently worked through. Of course, anxiety and/or depression that is so severe it meets the threshold for a clinical diagnosis of, say, GAD or MDD is not normal and requires intervention, but this is generally not what is being referred to in MH awareness campaigns and MH articles in mainstream media. Medicalising the normal spectrum of human emotion risks denying people the opportunity to naturally develop coping skills and manage their feelings. It can remove the sense of personal agency, and the management of difficult feelings can end up becoming somebody else's responsibility, whether that's somebody having to tip-toe around them, validate them, provide them with exceptions, allowances and special treatment, or take the blame for the way they are feeling. None of which is particularly conducive to contentment.

My first degree was in psychology and one of my modules explored these kinds of issues in depth. It was mind-blowing to me at the time. It made me realise that I didn't want to study psychology anymore because my motivation for doing so effectively stemmed from my own victim mentality; I was seeking external explanations for why I felt the way I did instead of choosing to move forward and focus my efforts on the one thing that was in my power to change - me. I decided I'd had enough mental health awareness to last me a lifetime and dropped out 1.5 years in.

Poor is not a verb. Poor is an adjective.
I’m not sure I can think of a way to add a verb that would be correct. Happy to be corrected.

We all have mental health in the same way we all have physical health. I couldn’t get to bent out of shape about this.

Wow, may I say you are fascinating and write very eloquently.
Based on what you have said here, you will very much enjoy that book!

sobs,
i have been corrected already

Yeah it's wrong to say but it doesn't bother me. Loads of people say pin number which is also silly.

A lady in my local Iceland was screaming blue murder at the security guard for following her down an aisle, yelling "I got anxiety, I got anxiety!".
She then filmed the security guard on her phone and said her brothers would be back to beat him up.

Evening all, I posted a while back as I had recently separated from my then partner of 20 years, over the course of our relationship there were many times where he showed horrible and narcissistic behaviour and even though I think I knew this all along I just couldn’t get out of it. The final straw 2 months ago was when he had an absolutely vile meltdown whilst we were out in the car about how he never gets ‘ sex’ and how he pesters because if her didn’t he wouldn’t get it, that was the final straw for me and after a completely draining few weeks he moved out and I will never take him back. The issue I’m having now is that my mental health is at the lowest point it’s ever been in my life. Over the last 2 months I have had some sobbing outbursts at work, not sleeping well, eating well etc and panic attacks. I’ve been to the G.P who upped my sertraline from 100mg ( that I’ve been on for years) to 150 mg, and I’ve been on that for 4 weeks now change. I went to the G.P again this morning and I now have Sertraline 200mg, propranolol, and a short course of Zopiclone and Diazepam. I’m just so low and want to feel like myself, it just feels like I’ll never feel ‘ normal’ again. While he, after all the damage he’s caused is living life speaking to, and meeting other women etc. And I’m here trying to piece my life back together,, so sorry for the essay just feeling rubbish and I knew you guys would understand. Thank you for reading ❤️