5 Things To Stop Saying This World Mental Health Day
Today is World Mental Health Day. A day when our social media feeds become flooded with self-care tips, “positive vibes”, and calls to action for the mentally ill to just talk. For the mentally ill to just ask for help. For the mentally ill to just run, walk, diet, bathe, and burn their illness away with the help of a scented candle.
Cynicism aside, this post doesn’t seek to diminish the real efforts made by charities, those living with mental illness, and even well-meaning celebs, to challenge the stigma surrounding mental illness and provide effective support to those in need.
But throughout the white noise of acceptance and cure, how can we shift the conversation to mental health taboos we’re still yet to talk about, and the real action we’re still yet to take? Here are five phrases to stop and think twice about before reposting or repeating after today:
1. “It’s okay not to be okay”
Is it?
Is society really yet okay with the full spectrum of mental illness? Is it okay with the lived experiences of mental illness that cannot be understood as a prettily-packaged stereotype, or an aesthetically-pleasing quote?
Is society okay with people who hear voices? Hallucinate? Dissociate? People with compulsive thoughts, and impulsive behaviour? People who self-harm, and attempt suicide, and who (whisper it) aren’t sure yet if they really want to get better at all?
Is society okay with Black women not being “strong”, and with men who show their emotions? Is society okay with eating disorders among the overweight, and with the mentally ill on medication? Is society okay with drug-addicts and alcoholics being worthy of mental health support too?
2. “Be kind”
Being kind is the BARE minimum. It’s appreciated, but it isn’t nearly enough. There are other things we need to be if we really want to help those suffering from mental illness.
We need to be proactive by educating ourselves about mental illness. We need to be supportive of charities that deliver crucial support. We need to be mindful about language used when discussing mental illness. We need to be vocal by demanding our politicians make mental health care a priority. We need to be committed to dismantling the systems that perpetuate and/or cause mental illness, such as economic inequality, loneliness and isolation, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and toxic masculinity.
3. “Ask for help”
Placing the burden of getting better entirely on the person battling a mental illness perpetuates the idea that they’ve brought it all on themselves. Instead of telling the mentally ill to just talk, ask them what they need first. Instead of encouraging them to seek out support, make sure the right support is there in the first place.
And instead of telling them to ask for help, ask yourself how you can help them instead.
4. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”
What doesn’t kill you actually just …. tries to kill you. Tough times aren’t a rite of passage to a fully-fledged character-developed version of yourself. Tough times are just tough. Trauma didn’t make me stronger, trauma destroyed me. Mental illness didn’t make me stronger, mental illness wore me down to a shell of the person I wanted to be. Some days it still does.
What made me stronger, was me.
I take full credit for that, not my trauma, and certainly not my mental illness.
What also made me stronger was a myriad of privileges, my access to free mental health care, to doctors who cared, to therapists that understood, and my support network of empathetic family and friends.
5. “Life gets better”
The truth is, there’s no guarantee that life will get better, or worse. Life will continue to shit on you as much or as little as it likes. There is no quota of suffering we’re all allocated on this Earth. We aren’t necessarily spared the heartbreak of a romantic relationship, because we already suffered bereavement or grief. We don’t get to trade off mental stability for a body that’s guaranteed not to suffer injury or impairment one day. We aren’t promised the next day just because we planned for it.
Life might not get better. But what can get better, is you.
But we need a society brave enough to face mental illness for all its ugly truth, and one willing to take the real action needed to help.
