Who’s The Audience?
After overhearing a conversation recently, I thought it would be good to post this content for those who struggle with mental health and for those who are ‘non-believers’.
Two women were in a café, talking about life, health, family etc, and the topic of mental health came up. I didn’t get the full story, and it might have been taken out of context, but it’s something I want to explore nevertheless.
One of the women said something along the lines of “people with mental health problems are just weak.” This got to me, personally, and although I never would have approached these two women to challenge them, I did have a strong urge to do so.
When you’ve spent so long trying to manage feelings, understand what’s going on in your head and try to be positive about the future, any flippant comment like this can really touch a nerve and get your blood ‘boiling’.
By Very Definition
Weak: ‘lacking the power to perform physically demanding tasks’.
Mentally weak: ‘a lack of emotional resilience, mental firmness, and sound judgment, often characterised by an inability to cope with stress, a tendency to give up easily, and a reliance on external validation’.
Source Google/Google AI, respectively.
By definition, yes, physical and mental health issues are technically weaknesses, but only that’s if we use the model human being who is perfect in EVERY single way, if that person then starts to momentarily suffer from physical or mental strain, they are deemed ‘weak’.
Pobody’s nerfect (The US Office anyone?! – Nice little spoonerism there) and the reason we all have our little moments and/or extensive periods of ‘weakness’ is because we are simply human. We are affected by things, we are emotional, we do worry, we do stress and we do so many other things which makes us who we are – Any weakness we experience is just something which happens.
Other people (still referring to these as the ‘non-believers’) think that mental health is a choice. It is not. If it was that easy to simply ‘snap out of’ then I would have done it 20 years ago. Do people really think I’ve carried this burden for this long when I could have just woken up one day and thought “nah, I’m not feeling like this from today onwards.” – No, it just doesn’t work like that, unfortunately.
I feel some people are very ignorant towards this sensitive topic. If they can’t see it, like a physical illness, they believe it’s not real, or it’s ‘all in your head’. If they see somebody who’s walking with crutches hobbling along the street, they’ll have sympathy because of what that person has been through. However, the person behind, walking, shall we say ‘normally, or without hindrance, suffers from mental health issues, which they cannot see, so they are perfectly fine.
This comes down to 2 factors; experience and education.
I think if you haven’t experienced something in life, you simply cannot make powerful statements and expect people not to react to them. I would never advise somebody (women) on childbirth, because I’m male, and will NEVER experience this in my life. I might imagine how painful, stressful and mentally straining this might be, but I will never know, hence why I don’t make comments about it.
If there is an absence of experience, then education comes into play. If those who haven’t had any experience, start to learn, then they can start to understand. Of course, there will never be a true unambiguous comprehension of the dark clouds, but they will have a greater amount of knowledge than they would of had prior.