To struggle to believe people who say they’ve “never thought about their mental health”?

[HeartyCyanEagle]

I recently read an interview with Joan Collins where she said “I never have thought about my mental health, ever. My mental health is perfect.”

I find statements like that fascinating more than anything. Not because I think everyone must be mentally ill, be traumatised or constantly analyse themselves. But because being human inevitably involves stress, grief, insecurity, anxiety, emotional conflict, disappointment, loss, fear etc at some point.
I also sometimes wonder whether older celebrities/public figures from certain generations define “mental health” very differently altogether.

For example, Joan Collins has obviously lived an extraordinarily dramatic/public/emotionally eventful life across decades - multiple marriages, fame, pressure, heartbreak, public scrutiny etc, which is partly why I find the idea of someone never having reflected on their mental health genuinely fascinating.

So when people say they’ve literally never thought about their mental health, I sometimes wonder whether it reflects generational attitudes, repression/stoicism, different definitions of mental health, image management or genuinely just a very psychologically resilient temperament.

AIBU?

To me, mental health issues means some degree of abnormality of response. Eg.

Being anxious about GCSE exams? Normal.

Being crippled with anxiety about leaving the house to the extent you run out of food but can't so much as walk to the corner shop for a tin of beans & a loaf of bread? Mental health issue.

Being a bit of perfectionist or clean freak with an immaculate home? Normal.

Scrubbing your hands obsessively/repetitively on a daily basis to a point where your skin gets cracked and sore? Mental health issue.

Well the peaks and troughs of life are part of a normal life, suffering with grief etc for a period is the normal response and does not automatically mean a mental health condition.
the same with anxiety; it is normal to feel anxious in situations that should make someone feel anxious, it doesn’t mean they are suffering with anxiety.

anxiety, depression etc are very real illnesses but obviously not everyone experiences them.

I’m the same as PPs in that it’s not something I think about often. Sometimes I feel sad or anxious, and sometimes I have a headache or a blocked nose. The latter doesn’t automatically mean I’m in poor physical health a way that requires thought or treatment, so it follows that the former doesn’t automatically mean I’m in poor mental health that requires thought or treatment.

If either a feeling of anxiety or a headache didn’t shift after a reasonable length of time then at that point you’d start to think about further investigation.

I think recently there has been a trend towards not tolerating any kind of negative emotions at all, which doesn’t bode well for general resilience.

I don't think I've ever thought about my mental health as such. Being sad when sad things happen etc isn't a mental disorder.

If you think you're depressed, first check you're not just surrounded by twats, I say. Some people have clinical depression for reasons of body chemistry etc, obviously. But when I've been really miserable, I just needed to get away from abusive arseholes.

I’m 20 years younger than Joan, but I’m with her. I’ve been bought up in poverty, suffered shocking bereavements, had marriage/job highs and lows, bought up children - but all these things are just the normal trajectory of life. When I’ve been down I’ve had to plough through and have never considered that I have mental health issues.

I think I a very lucky that I haven’t suffered from a mental health condition and I think Joan is just acknowledging that.

I'm 61, and 'mental health' (or 'its affecting my mental health) as a phrase never seemed to come up till the last few years. There was mental illness of course, but otherwise you were generally OK, or sad, or anxious, or happy as part of normal life, as most others have said. I don't expect to be fine all the time which I guess is what some people decide being mentally healthy is? It seems to put undue pressure on otherwise normal people to feel the need to be mentally healthy in a way that means OK most of the time.
And I think it dilutes things so the suffering of those who are truly depressed, mentally ill etc is less to the forefront.

But because being human inevitably involves stress, grief, insecurity, anxiety, emotional conflict, disappointment, loss, fear etc at some point.

Yes, but that's not mental health, as long as they're being felt as responses to appropriate events.

If I'm anxious before I have to give a big presentation, then that's normal. If I'm anxious about every single human interaction I have, then that's pretty clearly a mental health issue.

So yes, I can easily believe that lots of people go through life feeling a completely normal set of emotional reactions to things and never worrying about their mental health.

Just like I've happily gone through life never once worrying about my spleen, because it's never given me reason to worry about it.

I will get flamed for saying this but I personally believe too much dwelling on how you feel about everything isn't helpful. The navel gazing actually stops you a) developing a sense of perspective b) moving on c) taking steps to solve problems/deal with things

Joan Collins has been married five times, nearly lost her daughter in an awful car crash, had an abortion when she was engaged to warren beatty, was a survivor of the casting couch/studio system, said in her memoir that one husband drugged and raped her and one husband spent her money and was a conman. She’s undoubtedly had some tough and awful times, but probably doesn’t frame it as a mental health issue, but rather part of the fabric of a very long life.

Having worked extensively in sales, I can assure you that a great many people have never once critically considered their own personalities. After all, what if they had to consider a fault? Their entire self image could fall apart.

I think that's something entirely different to mental health, though.

Joan's of an age where she'll remember men having their wives committed to the insane asylum, or being comitted for having children out of wedlock. I think talk of mental health feels quite stigmatising for the Quiet Generation.

I hadn’t thought about mine before my mum died in my 20s.

100% this.

I have experienced all of these at various times in my life, as well as many more positive emotions. That's just normal over the course of a lifetime.

Never once been concerned about my "mental health".

That doesn't mean I don't recognise some people experience MH issues nor would I dismiss them as unimportant. Years ago we lost a close friend to suicide so I have always been aware since then that some MH issues such as depression are potentially very serious.

But I still don't think it is helpful to consider every negative emotion or experience as a medical issue.

You are not unreasonable to wonder, but I admit I'd never given it a single thought until after I had ds.
At 46 I realised I was feeling low and couldn't shake it off, for the first time. Before that I rarely felt low. Usually some fresh air and a slice of cake would sort it.
Having been to the gp, then sat and thought, I realised my then partner was the issue, and that I was unhappy rather than depressed (big difference). Once that was clear, I dealt with it and haven't had an issue since.

I think most people are generally happy go lucky and don't worry about such things.

YABU. Some of us worry about things (that are normal to worry about) but we don’t have anxiety, and we feel unhappiness and grief but are not depressed.

All of these things are normal parts of life. That is why I roll my eyes when my DM tells me she gets depressed sometimes. No, sometimes she is, rightfully, unhappy.

In Joan Collins case I think this is much more related to the fact she demonstrates a lot of narcissistic traits (as described by her son) then it does because she takes all her emotions as normal in a healthy way - as people seem desperate to believe here.

I love how people on here think they can decide for others where the line between normal emotions and being mentally unwell lies though.

I've thought about it in terms of, "I've experienced this, I felt this way, and now I feel better". I actually think I have quite robust mental health. Like a PP I tend to just get on with things. I feel my feelings and then I start to feel better.

I did get very down when a good friend died suddenly a couple of years ago, and I did have a little bit of grief counselling after I just burst into tears about a month after he died. But I never considered that I had depression or anything like that. It was just a very sad, unexpected and totally unfair event, and in the end it was time that got me through.

Actually I find it an odd thing to say, by someone involved in Hollywood. I accept she personally may have only seen her life events as part of normal life; but presumably in Hollywood particularly when she was young. I am guessing she encountered people like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando with troubled childhoods, etc; all the repressed gay stars (like Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, James Dean); Vera Ellen and other dancers with eating disorders; Vivian Leigh (bipolar)…

I’d have thought Hollywood was a hotbed of people with mental health problems; self medicating with alcohol, sex, alcohol, barbiturates…

My DM died recently. She was 90. Ste never once had any issues relating to mental health. It’s not that she wasn’t empathic to those around her who did have problems. And it’s not that her life was always rosy. But in her eyes it was just life. She wasn’t being stoical or brave or, indeed, stupid. When her son died traumatically she grieved as any mother would When the greyness of winter dragged on and on she just smiled, wrapped up and went on her daily walk, it was you see just winter. I don’t think I’ve met another person like her in these recent years.

I think that things have gone too far with safe spaces, trigger warnings and some people thinking that any emotion other than happy is a problem that can be solved by medicine.

Life has events that make people sad, annxious or angry and it doesn’t mean that you are mentally ill if you haven’t bounced back from it quickly. Brains are complicated. You can suddenly think about stuff that happened a long time ago and it’s not a bad sign if you feel sad or angry again.

The trivialisation of mental health has led to people with serious mental illnesses being trivialised and a therapy industry to make big bucks as people fall for the message to naval gaze trivialised matters.

But they weren’t a mental health issue.
Life happened - she dealt with it.
Zero mental health issues do not mean you’ve never faced any challenges, why would it?

I think you’re confusing mental health problems with normal emotional issues we all endure,

I have also never considered my mental health, that doesn’t mean I’m never sad, never upset, never suffered grief or stress, but it has not ever been to the extent it’s a mental health problem that I have to consider, I am still mentally healthy, and I can cope with the issues I face, I understand what they are and I can deal with them, they have not developed into a mental health problem that I need to consider, they are just the normal life conditions we all endure.

it becomes a mental health issue to be considered when you can no longer cope.where it has a deeper impact on you.

Counting "stress, grief, insecurity, anxiety, emotional conflict, disappointment, loss, fear etc" as mental health is to me a bit like counting tiredness, hunger, bruising, walking, going to the toilet, feeling hot/cold as parts of health.

They are just normal things. If something felt a bit off about one of those aspects of life, like if I was needing the toilet far more often than normal, could not fall asleep, was experiencing excessive or unusual bruising etc then I might wonder if it is a health issue and see a doctor. But just normal feeling hungry when it's been a while since the last meal, being tired at the end of the day, those are not health issues in fact they are very healthy signs that everything is normal.

I think mental health is the same. When you're feeling anxious about a difficult conversation or a presentation you have to give that's normal. If you're feeling anxious all the time over very minor things it could be indicative of a problem.

I don't think that's a generational view of mental health at all (I'm millennial - peak age to obsess over MH apparently) but I do think including any feeling other than happiness as a mental health issue is a strange skew that the internet seems to encourage generally and I don't think that is very helpful.

People with mental-health issues aren’t naval gazers.