>It’s about time that as society we open up about mental health and how to deal with our issues,
I hear this general refrain a lot, and something about it has always sounded wrong to me. What do people mean when they say "deal with our issues?" The way this sentiment is conveyed makes it sound like there is some promised land of mental health around the bend, if only enough people have the "right" attitude about it.
I'm not particularly convinced that there's much of any stigma against mild mental health issues these days. And by mild, I mean normal problems that most people will encounter in their lives (ie, OCD, anxiety, depression, etc.) In fact, a lot of people are actively encouraged to talk about their mental health problems, to a degree which would have been unthinkable in the 1950s. Generally, I think this has been a net positive for society. I know a lot of people who had they been born in an earlier time might have been marginalized, or felt that they were truly broken, rather than simply being neurotic. But, I also believe there are eventually diminishing returns to this approach. Constantly focusing on your problems and your negative emotions can have very perverse incentives. It's possible to become addicted to your own misery, and it's also possible to become addicted to the relief and the closeness that comes from people trying to sooth your psychological trauma. Generally speaking, any extreme emotions can be addicting, and moderation is not the same as repression.
Given that we keep talking about mental health issues more and more, but suicide rates for teens are generally increasing, I'm very skeptical that having more "conversations" about mental health is going to do much good at all. In the least, most of the "conversations" I see about mental health mostly have to do with putting on a big show of empathizing with the victim, who themselves are putting on a big show of displaying their emotions.
Now of course, if "conversations" about mental health means something different, such as an analytical approach to causes of trauma and positive mental health outcomes, then I'm all for it.
Ah yes, those mild mental health issues that still get people fired for regularly under the auspice of "attendance issues," "cultural fit," or any of the numerous reasons they can get fired for that are totally the result of their mild mental health issue but have to be re-phrased so that the company doesn't get sued.
As someone with ADHD, anxiety/depression, and chronic migraines; the bullshit conversations and 'management' meetings I've had to sit through because people very much still don't have any understanding of these issues is staggering. While I am not getting fired for calling out twice or thrice in a week once in a while, that's mostly due to me being in a "knowledge worker" job, if I was in a customer facing job or other position that requires "butt in seat hours" I am certain that I would have already gotten canned 100 times over due to these mild mental health issues; because quantity attendance is more important that quality attendance in a lot of jobs.
OCD isn't a "normal thing that most people will encounter" problem, neither is depression, neither is anxiety; OCD isn't some "lol I need to fill my gas tank to a round dollar amount," depression isn't "boy howdy did I feel sad for a few weeks after that break-up," anxiety isn't "that was a bit stressful firing that employee." You can feel depressed without having depression, you can feel anxious without having anxiety, you can be exacting without having OCD; but none of the prior are mental illnesses while all of the latter are. So, while the __feeling__ has been normalized, the actual illness absolutely hasn't been; and from experience it's been made more difficult by the generalizing of the words, where now people equate the action/feeling with the much more serious illness - so now I have to spend time explaining how debilitating the actual illness is, just to have people go "well I feel depressed sometimes, and I'm here."
Quite frankly, one of the many reasons folks have to put how bad things are or can get out there is due to this conflation of the feeling with the illness; so you seeing these expressions of "things are actually this bad for me," and conflating it with "emotional porn" because "everybody experiences things like OCD, depression, anxiety, etc" is actually a perfect example of why I can very confidently say that the stigma about mental health hasn't changed that much; it's just been repackaged with a nicer bow.
I hear this general refrain a lot, and something about it has always sounded wrong to me. What do people mean when they say "deal with our issues?" The way this sentiment is conveyed makes it sound like there is some promised land of mental health around the bend, if only enough people have the "right" attitude about it.
I'm not particularly convinced that there's much of any stigma against mild mental health issues these days. And by mild, I mean normal problems that most people will encounter in their lives (ie, OCD, anxiety, depression, etc.) In fact, a lot of people are actively encouraged to talk about their mental health problems, to a degree which would have been unthinkable in the 1950s. Generally, I think this has been a net positive for society. I know a lot of people who had they been born in an earlier time might have been marginalized, or felt that they were truly broken, rather than simply being neurotic. But, I also believe there are eventually diminishing returns to this approach. Constantly focusing on your problems and your negative emotions can have very perverse incentives. It's possible to become addicted to your own misery, and it's also possible to become addicted to the relief and the closeness that comes from people trying to sooth your psychological trauma. Generally speaking, any extreme emotions can be addicting, and moderation is not the same as repression.
Given that we keep talking about mental health issues more and more, but suicide rates for teens are generally increasing, I'm very skeptical that having more "conversations" about mental health is going to do much good at all. In the least, most of the "conversations" I see about mental health mostly have to do with putting on a big show of empathizing with the victim, who themselves are putting on a big show of displaying their emotions.
Now of course, if "conversations" about mental health means something different, such as an analytical approach to causes of trauma and positive mental health outcomes, then I'm all for it.