Mental Health Awareness… is it working?

Up and down the country businesses, charities, celebrity personalities and more will ‘celebrating’

Mental Health Awareness week in the UK. Attentions will be focused again on de-stigmatisation, providing information and signposting to various services designed to help people experiencing psychological difficulties. Every year has a theme and this year’s focus is kindness.

Being kind to others is usually pretty common, in fact, I’d go as far to say it is a natural human instinct. Being kind to ourselves is a little less common. Could you be kinder to yourself? Perhaps when things don’t quite go to plan or you make a mistake of some kind? Being kind to others when they are being kind to you is pretty easy too. Being kind to others when they are not being kind is often more difficult. Could you be kinder and more patient with others?

Only for this week though… then you can go back to being nasty :)

As a person who has been in and around this conversation for over 10 years professionally and had various personal and vicarious experiences over the last 25 years; I am conflicted. Mental Health Awareness campaigns are generally led by good people with noble intentions but the time for awareness has passed, we must look to solutions; better understanding and better education.

In 2012, I completed a Master’s degree in Sport and Exercise Psychology. At that time, the number of people speaking openly about the challenges they faced and the awareness around mental health was almost unheard of. The last few years have seen a massive increase in awareness, supported by prominent sports people and celebrities speaking out about their experiences. I fully applaud and respect every individual who has shown vulnerability in speaking about their personal experiences in this manner.

The campaigns around awareness and de-stigmatisation can be seen as successful; more people are accessing support and more people are openly and proudly talking about their experiences. What we don’t readily see or talk about is the gulf that has been created between supply and demand, resulting in months upon months of waiting lists for people who need access to services immediately and the implications of this on the quality of their lives.

In the UK, we currently have more awareness around Mental Health than ever. We are also experiencing more suicides than ever [1] , more people on anti-depressants than ever with antidepressant prescriptions almost doubling between 2008-2018 [2], and what has been described as a mental health crisis amongst young people[3] …the list goes on. Something doesn’t add up.

I see the problem as twofold. Increased awareness has resulted in increased demand for publicly funded mental health services. These public services are underfunded and inadequate to deal with the consistently increasing demand. The second is promoting the idea that it is ‘normal’ to be happy, positive and extroverted all the time and if you’re not? You’re not ‘normal’, go get help.

A quick exercise for you. Don’t think of a pink elephant. Don’t think of that pink elephant dancing around in circles and wearing a hat…. Did you think of a pink elephant? I bet you weren’t thinking of a pink elephant before I told you so. I bet you’re thinking about him right now! Damn you elephant!

On the Underground in London you will occasionally see signs saying: ‘BEWARE: Pickpockets operate in this area’. I will often check my valuables and increase my alertness, even though in over 20 years of using the underground system, I have never been a victim of crime or even witnessed such an experience. Do you ever react in a similar manner? Or know someone who does?

Taking these examples into account, imagine the potential impact on of a message like 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem every year. That’s 25%. Am I in that 25%? How do I know?

Maybe I should research symptoms… Can you see how this cycle of thinking and then feeling starts?

Imagine how it could quickly spiral out of control.

Do you remember being a teenager? Personally, I was impressionable, keen to please others and ‘fit in’, happy to take on an idea if it fit snugly into my current perception of the world. One side of the coin is to start a conversation, the other side is to plant a seed in those who are most vulnerable.

In a survey of 1,000 GPs in 2019; 58% believed an unintended consequence of de-stigmatisation campaigns has resulted in more people wrongly believing they have a mental health problem [3].

We must start to gain a better understanding for ourselves and promote that better understanding in these campaigns. We must be conscientious over our use and presentation of data. We must start to teach people, especially young people, not to fear our experiences, not to fear our emotions, thoughts or feelings. Challenges are a part of life; experientially and emotionally, and part of the joy and satisfaction of life is to navigate, overcome and fail in the face of these challenges. The youth of today deserve better and if we continue on the current road, we are failing them.

How much longer can we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results?

If this week was about raising awareness of obesity, would there be mention of regular exercise?

Would there be mention of a balanced diet? Is the prevention of obesity the best way to safeguard against it?

If you’ve got this far, you clearly have an interest in this subject and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It is up to people like you and I to do whatever we can to change this situation. So what now? How can we build on the progress we’ve made? How can we shift the dial even further?

Will you continue to champion awareness? Or is it time to change the conversation?

[1] https://media.samaritans.org/documents/SamaritansSuicideStatsReport_2019_Full_report.pdf

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47740396

[3] https://happiful.com/documentary-reports-mental-health-crisis-amongst-young-people/