To think that "mental health/illness awareness" is bollocks

[clink02]

Before anyone reads the title wrong, I believe that it's incredibly important to bring awareness. What I mean by bollocks is that society gives the impression that it cares about mental health but it's only restricted to depression and anxiety.

My friend is a therapist and when talking to her, she doesn’t believe in ADHD but believes in other mental illnesses/neurodevelopmental disorders. It’s a sentiment that’s echoed by many people in society but I was shocked that a mental health professional refused to believe it.

I also have a cousin who became schizophrenic during her time in college and all her friends slowly drifted away from her. These would be the same people that posted “Mental Health Matters” on their Facebook page.

I totally agree. People can be quite black and white with mental health ie it’s often ‘depression or ‘anxiety’ but there’s so much more that people struggle to explain. My mental health as an adolescence / student at uni was so incredibly poor but I was not anxious or depressed and taken less seriously than my housemates on anti -depressants. I don’t like to label it but I definitely displayed traits of a personality disorder when it came to intimate relationships. When a boyfriend broke up with me my friends created a group chat (which I saw ping up on their phone) saying I needed ‘shaking’ because I was so distraught about a break up. No support there but the same friends that said they were depressed wanted support from me but my mental health issues were just deemed as ‘craziness’.

thankfully since then I’ve seen a therapist and have a much healthier way of thinking but it would be nice if my friends at the time didn’t dismiss me because I wasn’t suicidal.

My daughter went a uni that had a bit of a reputation for student suicide. She herself had some quite serious MH problems whilst there.

She was in a sports club that had an awareness drive after a member had sadly taken their own life, but when she herself was struggling they told her to leave. She also noticed the men arguing about who was going to "have to" share a room with the depressed autistic guy when they were at an away fixture.

I think much of the MH awareness promotion drive is often down to bandwaggoning and box ticking rather than any real care, understanding or knowledge.

I studied what was at the time in the early 90s referred as abnormal psychology. Mental health, which is what we now call it, only referred to disorders that required some serious intervention, being medical or hospital. The rest was just 'normal' psychology. Depression and anxiety were only referred to abnormal psychology if it was bad enough to require admission into a mental hospital!

I see it quite like this. Not admission, but certainly much more severe than what we now refer for example as social anxiety.

I also have a cousin who became schizophrenic during her time in college and all her friends slowly drifted away from her. These would be the same people that posted “Mental Health Matters” on their Facebook page.

My brother is schizophrenic and let me tell you, his behaviour at times has pushed everyone away.

And I'm talking about grown adults who love him and only want the best, not college kids who probably don't have a clue how to handle this sort of thing.

Box ticking at it's finest IME. Yes to the person who said mainly aimed at mild anxiety and depression. Bipolar and psychosis? Nope.

I remember work doing a "Bring your whole self to work day" and one of the slides being someone disclosing their bi-polar.

If I did that it would be the death knell to my career, like it did in my last job.

I try SO hard to stay in employment despite intermittently being sectioned. I got so angry with MIND and slogan that was something like "It's time to talk " . Easy for you to say MIND, you're not going to be there to pick up the pieces when it all goes wrong.

I really don't want my post to stop people asking for help; that's very important. I'm just saying it's not the risk free, no-brainer that it is presented as being.

I fully agree with the OP re schizophrenia (and similarly severe conditions). They remain totally othered, and they are largely absent or excluded from the national conversation. Mental health awareness seems solely for the worried well and for people with less 'unattractive' mental health problems like depression and anxiety. One in a hundred people develop schizophrenia, often in adolescence. That's one young person in every three classrooms. Parents should be as educated about it is they are about autism.

Meanwhile they are dying in numbers because it is relatively easy, politically speaking, to get away with underfunding their care.

Re ADHD, of course the therapist was dim or weird if she denied its existence. But there is a real issue with people resorting too readily to this label when in fact their problems have other origins, such as trauma, or when people over-focus on this fashionable diagnosis instead of making a more open-minded and inclusive exploration of themselves in therapy.

Many therapists try to avoid over-focus on diagnostic terms. as clients do often cling to them like lifebelts in a stormy sea and can use them as a defence against really unpicking their difficulties.

My brother is schizophrenic too, so I know exactly where you’re coming from, there.
Something that is often ignored when it comes to all the happy clappy awareness and acceptance, is that, with the best will in the world, some people with mental health problems can be very difficult, hard work, or even just plain unpleasant, to be around.

Exactly.

And something else that's ignored is that not everyone has the capacity to deal with it.

It doesn't mean they don't believe mental health matters.

I think that as a society we can have more awareness of something but individually not have the tools to deal with someone is a serious mental health crisis.

Emotional and psychological support is extremely difficult to give on an individual level and often family and professionals are the only ones who can meet with the significant demands it requires from people who are dealing with it and the harsh truth is that a lot of the work needs to come from the individual who has the condition.

I have been on both sides of this coin. Needing significant mental health support and giving a tonne of emotional support to others. The first required me to take control of the situation to recover, the second nearly cost me my own mental health. I’ve since become very aware of my own personal limits and I assert them.

I had an episode of psychotic depression and a friend (who is also a therapist) said this about the MH unit they referred me to "Oh you don't want to go there, that is where they send the really crazy people" Um thanks for that.

I think people bang on a lot about mental health awareness but fundamentally don’t know what to do if they see someone with a mental illness experiencing symptoms. I got in a state over something small and quit my job two years ago, the mental health first aider was also the hr woman, she just had no idea what to do and left me to drive home in the state I was in, no checking I was ok before I went or anything. It was completely out of character for me and turned out to be the start of a bipolar episode. I think this mental health awareness/MH first aid training is the biggest con going.

I have severe anxiety, ADD, OCD, and have never gotten any proper treatment. My
life is miserable because of it although I'd never normally admit it. But since you bring it up... I don't think we need more awareness, I think we need real treatments and real research for women's health, and doctors should be held accountable for their shitty comments and lack of care. All this "awareness" and literally no progress at all.

Since the Tories bought in austerity mental health has been demolished. There used to be a lot of funding for people to have counselling and proper therapy and GP's could send you and you'd be seen within a month. We've got to the point no one bothers to ask for it because you just get told the wait runs into months/years and fobbed off with an app. I had panic attacks for a year after nearly dying and my GP prescribed therapist I waited 8 months for dropped me before even seeing me because I couldn't see her in person because I couldn't leave the house! I had tried to explain I couldn't do face to face because that was why I needed therapy...nope.

I never understand how people can't grasp lack of funding for mental health has had a huge knock on effect on the economy when they say everyone is out of work and lazy etc.

Your facts are incorrect.

Spending on the NHS mental health services has been increasing year on year and was budgeted in line with increases in MH service demand.

The problem is a bigger and bigger percentage of the population has MH issues and needing/wanting MH services, which has increased far more than anticipated.

I think it's important to address WHY humans are relying so much on MH services. Are we becoming a less resilient species? Is modern life too much for mankind? Do other countries have the same patterns?

According to research done by WHO, all countries are having to scale up their MH services.

The biggest increase is in under 18s facing MH issues which used to be a tiny percentage of all MH cases. I think social media has a LOT to answer for, and it would be nice to see it banned for under 18s.

My BIL is schizophrenic and social media has a huge amount to play in making things worse. We got him to delete all SM accounts and things improved for him.

I don't know what the answer is, but blaming political parties is ridiculous.

It was actually in 2012 (during austerity) when the Tories/Lib Dems voted through that mental illness needed to be treated on par with physical illness, so that’s not quite right. The mental health budget increased massively as well over the subsequent 10 years.

The thing I can’t square up is why mental health treatment fundamentally doesn’t seem to work. There’s evidence for CBT and antidepressants but very little else. Very few people seem to genuinely recover from their illness in the long run.

I don’t know what the answer is but I suspect it lies somewhere between they don’t really work, there isn’t the money to give everyone precisely what they need, it’s mostly shit life syndrome and the rarely spoken about aspect of recovery is that people need to actively engage in getting better. I agree that social media is a double edged sword.

People just don’t know how to deal with extremes- when they think autistic they think sheldon from big bang theory (yes I know he wasn’t diagnosed😉), but in real life the people I know who make more noise than most like and get so stressed they need to be calmed down- if their friends and family can’t cope it’s unlikely society can.

It’s all very well to want to raise ‘awareness’ of these issues, but that’s as far as it seems to go. And ultimately I think it’s unhelpful, and even actively unkind. It gives people the impression that there’s a support network out there, and people willing (and able) to listen and support, when in fact most people are struggling to varying degrees and simply don’t have the energy, skills or emotional bandwidth to help others in a meaningful way. And there’s precious little professional support out there. So it’s not necessarily doing anyone any favours.

I think it's important to address WHY humans are relying so much on MH services. Are we becoming a less resilient species? Is modern life too much for mankind? Do other countries have the same patterns?
I totally agree with your post. Our current society seems to rely on needing to consider everything a pathology that needs expert care.

It is normal to feel depressed at some points of uiur lives. It is normal to feel anxious about the unknown, about taking on responsibilities we'd rather leave for others to take, to push our boundaries and confront of fears.

What we used to call 'grew a bone' is now labelled as mental health.

I don't care what we call what we are feeling, but we need to accept taking ownership of these and doing so usually involves riding the wave rather than avoid it at all cost. It is about accepting that life throw us a lot of shit, that the shit is painful when it hits us, and that it's our role to manage it.

Most management of severe mental health disorders is pharmaceutical management, ie. What we dinitely can't do ourselves.

Mental health funding has not kept pace with demand, with real-terms funding cuts since austerity leading to services being under-resourced, despite an increase in total cash spending. While overall NHS spending on mental health has increased in cash terms, it has not kept up with demand, and its share of the total NHS budget is projected to decrease slightly in the coming years. Cuts to local council budgets have also impacted public health, school, and youth mental health services, further straining the system.

It may look like we are spending more but in real terms, just like everything else, cuts have had to be made. The app for example cannot replace a trained psychotherapist or real contact for someone who is lonely.

Loneliness is increasing and we know it's the equivalent of smoking 15 cigs a day for poor health. That is linked to the internet/social media I suspect although then people say "but I found my niche group of basket weaving otters online! I couldn't live without them!" so it is double sided. I think seeing people face to face has become under rated as everyone is so time pressured. That goes for friends as well as GPs and MH practitioners.

The whole SEN system has complicated things too as the ND is bundled into MH when personally I think it should have a new separate department dealing with it as a holistic specialism for education from 0-18. Then the old MH services the NHS used to have for patients with the more traditional needs might be seen before they need to be sectioned which obviously costs and uses much more resources. We had a grip on this before, so it can be done.

You are not being unreasonable, when my brother was having episode of, I don’t know what, a few years ago, I suspect a personality disorder/emotional dis-regulation spell that lasted 2 years (he is a lot better now thankfully) there was no real actual help available, yet everywhere I turned the whole mental health bandwagon was plastered everywhere; the radio, tv, adverts, certain friends who love taking about their own mental health. I walked in and straight out of tk max once because there was a huge board behind the tills to the effect of ‘TK Maxx cares about mental health’. Yet, I’m sure if I had asked at the till for some tangible examples of exactly what it is TK Maxx were providing for mental health, I wouldn’t have got any kind of answer 😂

I don’t think it’s bollocks at all. You have given some very specific (and quite old) examples in a sea of society moving forward towards understanding and accepting mental illness. The change in society in the last 50 years is huge.

My friend is a therapist and when talking to her, she doesn’t believe in ADHD but believes in other mental illnesses/neurodevelopmental disorders. It’s a sentiment that’s echoed by many people in society but I was shocked that a mental health professional refused to believe it.

Im with your therapist friend. You have to understand that a lot of people are being diagnosed with ADHD, when really it’s a trauma response.

I find it very hard to agree with the ADHD hype. I know that if I got tested, I’d be diagnosed with it. I have cptsd and I find it invalidating when I hear “oh you’re only traumatised because you probably have adhd.” No, I’m traumatised because I had prolonged exposure to really crappy situations.

Plus the vast majority of people are not equipped to support or help suffers of serious mental illness anyway.

I have a family member with psychosis- I don’t think he needs to talk to anyone but a professional 😭 can you imagine?! “Oh there are snakes in your body John? Let’s have a hug and talk it out”

more attention on mental illness does bring more funding, research and encourage high quality people to work in the area though.

Maybe people are having MH problems because there's no welfare system anymore, no stable employment, no support from family? I've struggled with anxiety and depression my whole life, and right now I'm extra anxious because it's very hard to find a proper permanent job. I've been freelancing and working in precarious conditions, and a good part of my energy goes into not panicking. Every other day I have to fight an anxiety attack because my life is precarious.
I don't need awareness, I need support and better conditions.

Very few people recover because they don’t put the work in or take any responsibility for doing so. Treatments like CBT etc requires effort and hard work. It’s not like antibiotics or a magic pill that you take and then you get fixed. You have to take the strategies the treatment provides you with and actually apply them. But people don’t. The same way a huge proportion of people don’t bother doing the exercises a physiotherapist gives them and then moan that they haven’t got better. Or the type 2 diabetics who are told they could put it into remission if they lose weight and change their lifestyle but they don’t and then moan that the tablets aren’t working anymore and they have to have their foot amputated because the doctors didn’t fix them. There is this completely unrealistic expectation that the NHS should just be able to fix everything and everyone without the individual making any effort themselves. There is a huge lack of personal accountability that pervades our society when it comes to health and wellbeing.

Edit - to clarify, I’m not necessarily talking about severe and enduring mental health illness and disease here, though many of those can (and are) managed with various strategies and medications. In fact, people with those conditions are generally the ones who do take responsibility for managing their condition (other than when relapsing or in crisis).