Jane had been noticing the pain for months before she went to the doctor and was diagnosed with arthritis. In the weeks following, those around her let her know there was no need to be ashamed - it was not a weakness. A few weeks later she was at a shopping centre when she noticed a poster on the back of the door encouraging people to reach out confidentially if they had arthritis. That no one needed to know.
This week is one of two weeks in Australia where there is the most awareness around mental health, being Suicide Prevention and R U Ok Day. It is amazing progress, and Australia is the best at mental health awareness in the world, hands down.
But I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.
Messaging around mental health continues to belong to a time when it was a mysterious black box malfunction - as unpredictable as caution inducing as a drunk uncle at a wedding. The immeasurability, lack of understanding, perceived unrelatability made people uneasy in past years, reminding us loudly (if not unintentionally) that mental health issues are a club that no one wants to be in. We don’t say there is no shame in having arthritis or an ACL tear. The irony, I sometimes think, is that we’ve inadvertently cooperated with the idea that our struggles can never be a water cooler conversation. They should be.
More of us will develop a mental health condition at some point than will develop arthritis. If we contemporised our views of mental health we should actually find more discomfort in those conditions than psychological ones.
I look forward to a time when we can replace “no need to be ashamed” conversations that feel deeply personalised, with conversations that recognise periods of poor mental health are inevitable. We are not flawed to have them, we are human to have them. We are not broken, we are living lives our minds are not designed for in the same way as we are sitting for longer than our bodies were designed for.
Understanding the “Why” mental health challenges as a society are increasing so much is a catalyst to shifting this. If we understand it we can destigmatise it, and if we can destigmatise it, we can do a better job of changing it. It’s time we put more energy into helping people understand the reason for struggling, and putting specific features in place for the specific issue. For example if someone is overthinking or worried about the future, cognitive strategies will help more than deep breathing. If someone spends half their life on their phone, spending time looking literally from side to side to increase their field of vision will be more calming than a relaxation app
This week our Power Tips share some little known facts about why “It’s not you, it’s all of us”. And far from being something to hide, it is truly the only thing we have in common.
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