The sad truth is that people still don’t understand mental health problems, or, and this is sadder, are unwilling—or scared—to be educated about mental health. I can only speak from personal experiences, but I’ve had a lot of them and they’ve seen me brushed aside as being willingly unsocial or deliberately miserable.
A recent example that frequently returns to roll around my empty head: I tried to explain not wanting to join in a night out by—half jokingly (to ease the awkwardness), but ultimately seriously—giving the explanation, ‘Just crippling depression.’ The G-chatted response to this was: ‘No. Parties are fun.’
It’s disheartening, distressing, despairing that this was an appropriate reaction to have. Yes, the rational part of my being completely understands that parties are supposed to be fun, but here’s the thing: this is not a conscious decision—to be wary of everything that society tells us is ‘fun’ and which, if you participate, means you are a good person and subsequently likeable and worthy of friendship, love and happiness.
Okay, there is that subset of society looking down on things like ‘fun’ and drinking and partying and general merrymaking, perhaps because they consider themselves above such trivial pursuits. However, I’d put money on the majority of people with mental health problems not consciously (and ‘consciously’ being the operative word) falling into this group. But when you are prone to such crippling bouts of self-hated, when the mirror mocks and your insides strangle and the inner voice whispers, ‘You are a dreadful person,’ how are you supposed to have ‘fun.’ As my spirit animal Morrissey says, ‘how dearly I’d love to get carried away.’
This seems like an easy concept to grasp, but still people still don’t understand mental health problems. That’s why Hyundai can genuinely think that it’s a good idea to (this year, that is. As in 2013) try to persuade people to buy their product by releasing an advert depicting a man failing to commit suicide because their precious fucking cars no longer contain emissions that can help you with that pesky being alive problem you’ve got.
It was pulled pretty hastily and they apologised (accepting no responsibility, of course), but while they tried their best to cover up the whole queasy affair—videos have been popping up and quickly disappearing all over—the fact remains that someone out there actually signed off on that. I managed to catch the video here (though it has since been deleted) and the man’s final trudge back into his house, having finally given up, is quite clearly played for laughs in the most grotesque way.
People still don’t understand mental health problems. For as long as I’ve been cognisant of having a mind dipped in squalor and sadness, there have been campaigns to bring about a better understanding of individuals with issues. I’ve seen these campaigns creep from the shadows—when once I had to actively trawl the internet looking for advice, now adverts urging people to talk about their mental health issues are shown on national television. So why do we sit in uncomfortable silence when the 'Time to Change' campaign appears on the television? Why is there still such an almighty stigma around broaching the subject?
One possible answer is that we are the product of a modern life which has seen us retreat behind screens. We communicate through emails, chat, texts, and social media. We argue over who has to phone for a taxi or make that terrifying call for a takeaway and we pray the hairdresser doesn’t ask up about our holidays because we cannot bear to make small talk with a human being. We pretend to be texting when we’re alone and waiting for somebody. We wander around, plugged into headphones and when we get together we drink and we drink and we ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ and we drink some more in case we ruin the mood. We are content with a sad face emoticon when life gets tough.
Perhaps this is not reminiscent of your life. Perhaps your support network is great and you're thinking ‘Do we really need to talk about mental health?’ We’re all getting by, aren’t we? We soldier on and we battle through difficult times and we still get stuff done.
And when we don’t—when someone calls it a day and throws in the towel and makes us late for work because the tube stopped and we have to spend a few extra minutes, nose pressed against someone who smells of BO and regret; or the road was closed and we have to go the long way round which adds five minutes to our journey so we miss the beginning of Pointless; or they didn’t show up for work because they can neither physically nor mentally muster the gusto to haul their heavy, tired bodies from bed, people tut and ill-informed millionaire footballers tweet about how ‘selfish’ it is—when this happens it causes a momentary ripple in our mind’s pool, but ultimately we sigh, we shrug, and we forget.
Of course, this kind of mentality could be applied to any disease, not just mental illnesses. Occasionally your well-meaning Facebook friends will talk about turning the site pink for breast cancer, and I’ve certainly been guilty of being a Facebook activist ('factivist'?) and posting one of those trite images that do the rounds when Mental Health Awareness week rolls along (normally a sad looking person looking morose in the best possible light—for more on this, see David Horvitz’s Sad, Depressed, People).
But nobody would dream of telling a cancer patient to just pull themselves together. Nobody tells someone with a broken leg to simply think it better. Nobody implies that your emphysema will magically disappear if you just try a little harder—these are where the injustices in discourse lie.
That’s why these campaigns are important. Because even though organisations are doing their best to educate the public about this sort of thing, mental illness, to the point of suicide no less, is still being wrapped up into a 30-second commercial, as though we’ll all laugh about it and then troll along to the nearest car dealership and hand over our hard-earned cash.
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week from 13–19 May. This year there's a focus on physical activity and exercise and the effect they have on mental wellbeing. There's no denying that sweet, sweet rush of endorphins that's rewarded after you've hauled ass to the gym, or on a run, or to a dance class, or boxing, or whatever your exercise of choice. But, much like that tango class or another flailing metaphor, it takes two to prick that pompous storm cloud and dealing alone isn't healthy. There ought to be a happy medium when it comes to bearing the load, which is why talking to someone is important, but it's never an easy chat to start.
Handily, see me Scotland's recent campaign strips the difficulty away to two words: 'Just Listen.' Inspired primarily by their research showing that people find it difficult to strike up the conversation for fear of getting it 'wrong,' there are tips on how to get started, how the chat might go, and what to do if it all starts to go a bit arse over elbow, all the while making it clear that it doesn't have to be a big deal.
It's a fascinating campaign because, in typically Scottish style, there's no bullshit. There's this delicious feeling permeating the whole campaign that feels as though if they could say 'Don't be a fanny about it,' they would. But that's probably frowned upon. If there's a less than cheesy way of ending this piece, I can't think of it, which is sad in itself and further perpetuates the stereotype that everything to do with genuine emotion is cheesy and embarrassing.
But gonnae no be that guy. If you talk to someone now, you could change a life.
