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?

You really don't have a clue do you. There are no words.

Same it's just life stresses, normal emotions not " mental health" issues

Exactly.

There may be some people who mistake emotions like anger, grief, loneliness as mental health conditions but when you really speak to a lot of people with anxiety, depression, EDs etc there is very often a whole series of contributory factors which underly them that you probably don’t know about.

I’m not going to go through a list of them here but really when you think to yourself that someone is just not resilient enough and not as good as you are or Joan Collins is at dealing with life then remember they may have faced things you can’t even imagine. That bereavement or bullying boss is just the final straw on top of a huge pile of awful events or people in their lives. And they are showing a lot of courage delving back into all that shit in order to stabilise their mental health.

My parents were stoic and did all that poor MH is just weakness kind of crap but they both had undiagnosed PTSD for various reasons and they took it out on their children. So no thanks you can keep your stiff upper lip and I’ll keep my therapist and my sanity and my adult children are very grateful for that or at least would be if they knew what the alternative would’ve been like.

My sentiments exactly.

I’m a millennial and I’ve never thought about my mental health either… I’m just not introspective, I have no time to be. Yes I experience emotions and ups and downs. But my mental health is not something I ever consider.

Contrary to your analysis, Joan Collins is also a highly successful woman. I wonder if successful people generally spend less time introspecting and getting caught up in their own heads, it’s not so much a generational thing.

I have PTSD, complicated grief, probably some depression as a result but I don't think about my mental health. Too many people counting on me. I just get on with it. I think my ability to do this is related to growing up with trauma and having parents who had no time for negative emotions and having to learn to just keep going from a young age. It's resilience but I don't think it's necessarily healthy. However, I do have the capacity to keep going regardless. Obviously there are some types of mental illness you can't do this with, but I don't have those.

There's a quote about Narcissistic Personality Disorder - that it's
"the only disorder where everyone ends up in therapy except for the person who should be in therapy."

From the little I know about Joan Collins I suspect this is the case with her.

You are muddling mebtal health with human emotions such as grief relationship breakups,stress at work,family problems etc. These are not mental health problems. Mental health problems are illnesses such as depression PTSDetc. Theymay be be brought on by traumatic events or they may appear for no know reason. Ie not reactive.
So Joan Collins is like me and millions of others. We have suffered in our lives which is natural,but we are not mentally ill.
Too many people nowadays have a bafd day at the office or face a break up and think they have mental health problems. They dont. They are normal life events Serious mental illness should never be trivialized.

It is possible to hide mental health problems (serious ones at times) though. No you shouldn't do that I wouldn't encourage anyone to do it ever. However I do it for a range of reasons, not least that part of my PTSD is that I don't want to face my PTSD. Yes, I should. Yes, it would help me. I would just rather bury it. I'm good at it too. My parents made sure I learned how to bury stuff at a young age because no-one was going to help me anyway. Lucky for me, real triggers are few.

I hadn't until last year when I basically had a breakdown.

I experienced the highs and lows of life, upset and tragedy, anxiety and sadness, but it was always in reaction to something, and not out of the ordinary. This is what I mean when I say I've never had to consider my mental health before.

There is a difference between mental illness and experiencing normal emotional processing. Some people truly do just experience things like sadness and anger without ever considering it as part of their mental health. And those things don't make you mentally ill. It is just a normal part of being human.

It's normal to grieve. It's normal to feel anxious sometimes. It's normal to feel absolutely raging some days. It only becomes mental illness when it's been going on for a while and when it starts to impair your functioning. Getting anxious before exams vs having panic attacks which stop you going out are very different things. You are not depressed just because you've felt down for two days. Things like this trivialise actual mental illness. Even worse, people now think of insta style self care etc when they hear about 'mental health'. The dilution of mental illness has now made it even harder for people to talk about severe and enduring mental illness, and the less socially acceptable symptoms. Understanding of things like Bipolar and Schizophrenia remain very poor!

Some people do just go through life thankfully without experiencing mental illness!!

Things like schizophrenia and bipolar you can't generally ignore or bury.

My PTSD does affect my daily functioning (mostly because it leads me to social isolation) but I am able to accommodate it in my life. Do I really need to be social? Is it so bad to be content in my own safe company? I am well aware of what the research says about loneliness and social isolation, but maybe it works for me? Do I accept who I am now or put myself through 'help' that is aimed at making me function how the world thinks I should? I am choosing to adjust to a new normal for me and it works for me.

I am well enough trained in this area that I know what a professional would think and advise. I'm just choosing my own course because it's easier. I don't see anything really wrong with that. If it no longer works for me in future, I can change it.

ETA - I reject the labels for myself and that I have mental health issues. I am having a perfectly normal reaction to abnormal circumstances.

When my brother broke his back (T12 incomplete from waist down) went to the northern general spinal unit there was no help for any family members.

I left hospital last year after skin adaptions noted as depression it took 6 months to get help from the local doc. Amitriptyline had stopped working in a hospital setting but still the gp wanted to argue this.

The GP claimed boots had never let them know I was a private patient for Sertraline

Hey, I'm actually a mental health nurse, and I think it's totally fine you feel that way. And I agree that lots of people with trauma are responding in a way that is entirely understandable. I meet people with childhood trauma or etc all the time, and ofc normal for them might look different to societies' version of normal. I truly don't consider a lot of people like that mentally unwell, and mostly it's about making sense of your experiences and understanding yourself.

They key for you is that it sounds like you understand your PTSD, and have reached a place of acceptance and that you live your life the way that suits you best.

There is also a range of normal even for things like psychotic illness. You get people who hear voices but aren't distressed by them and reject all treatment. I don't know that I would call those people mentally ill. Like technically if we were only using a diagnostic manual, but humans are more than a set of symptoms, and ultimately only you can say how you feel. If you are okay as you are, then great, but if you feel tortured by your symptoms, that's different!

You're the kind of mental health nurse I could work with :-). Thank you for your perspective.

I am also well qualified in this area and know the theory. The only torturing that goes on is between what I know academically and what I feel is right for me. I guess that's something I'm still reconciling.

Yes, this is very similar to me.

My father was an addict, tried to kill himself a few times, was committed in a mental institution for a while.

I have had normal ups and downs through life, in a few cases quite bad downs, but I've never really thought, "oh no, my mental health is bad."

More - well, this sucks, I guess I have to get through it. Sometimes I've thought about what might help, for example scaling back a commitment, getting the kids more involved in housework, changing my sleeping or exercise routine.

Other times, I rely on, This, too, shall pass. Because if anything is true, it is that change is inevitable.

But I don't really think in terms of my "mental health" which seems to me almost disempowering in a way? I'm not sure how to describe my sense of this, but that's the closest I can get.

We seem to live in a paradox.

We refer endlessly to mental health as if we are super progressive and understanding. And all sorts of people cite their poor mental health when in fact they are just experiencing human emotions. It sometimes feels like having mental health problems has become a rite of passage.

Yet despite this apparent acceptance and open-mindedness there continues to be widespread misunderstanding of mental health issues and an unwillingness to talk to people about how they are actually feeling.

So we bandy the words about but we don't explore the facts behind the headlines, as it were.

I have known several people like this, and most of them are from the same generation as your DM.

My mother also would say she’s never thought about her mental health but what she has done is used me as the punching bag for all her anxieties and depression and insecurities. So I’m a little sceptical of people who have “never thought about their mental health.”

Also, seen a few threads about MH the last couple of days where posters are showing the stigmas are alive and well!

I’m late 40s & completely agree with this.

Exactly. I experienced the exact same thing.

Those people also who drink themselves to death or who eat so much they require lots of medical attention or who take out their mental health issues on other people may never think about ttheir mental health and they may consider themselves stoic and getting on with life. For me those who address their issues and seek treatment are far more brave than those who keep it shut in but exprés it by acting out. If you don’t do this then it’s not directed at you btw.

But I know how much harm my parents did to all their three children who are all affected in different ways. They would have said that they were really good, loving parents. I’m not a perfect person by any means but I went to great lengths to break the cycle and neither of my children has anxiety or depression. My STBXH husband didn’t address his issues and would claim to have his life under control and is extremely successful socially and career wise. However he took a lot of his childhood issues out on me. Of course I was susceptible because of my childhood history.

So if someone thinks they’re being brave by getting on with life consider they might be the functional alcoholic or the bullying boss or the narcissistic partner. Or indeed they could be the parent who covers up their own anxiety by becoming helicopter parents and not be able to teach their children resilience and independence. How many parents do we hear about on here who allow one of their children to become so dependent on them that they never leave home or get a job? In many cases I think that’s the parents’ fault for not being able to deal with their own mental health issues and fear of abandonment.

She’s of a generation where people genuinely didn’t sit around discussing mental health, it just wasn’t a thing, people got on with shit and if they couldn’t, they’d have a breakdown and likely be locked away. My DH’s Grandad is a similar age and says the same thing. He’s also been through his fair share of crap but he’d never say he felt mentally ill, he still just got up and got on with life.

There is a lot of mention of resilience but I don't think MH problems are caused by a lack of resilience.
I think its feasible that some people (of any age) are fortunate in life not to experience mental health problems , however I dont think its true that JC generation were more "resilient" or "stoic".

I think a lot of MH issues, and - related but not the same - ND was not recognised or misunderstood, or there simply wasnt provision to treat it. I imagine hundreds if not thousands of soldiers might have had undiagnosed ptsd after ww1 or ww2. Women "suffering with their nerves, highly strung etc" may well have had MH issues that just weren't recognised or dealt with.

My grandmother deemed very co-dependent with my mum and threatened to commit suicide when she left home. I imagine she did have depression but it was never labelled or mentioned. Or that there was a sense of shame to put a label to something. Or a sense - still evident on this thread - that people should "pull themselves together"

My DH doesn’t think about his mental health. He’s very stable and things simply don’t phase him. He doesn’t get anxiety at all. He’s been sad when people die but he is very practical and just carries on. He shows love and anger but he cannot get his head around the idea of depression. I’m a big ball of angst so I find him hugely reassuring.

I don't like Joan Collins and, as the disappearing OP didnt link to the interview, we're just surmising what she actually said. And many of us can well believe that she doesn't think about her mental health. She just doesn't. She isn't denying that some people have mental health problems, nor are we.

My SIL's husband has had a couple of breakdowns and struggles with depression and extreme anxiety. SiL is incredibly strong, cares for him but he doesn't bring her down. She's resilient, cheerful and really enjoys life.