Before I start, I would just like to say that I’ll talk a little bit about trans rights later on so if that is something that affects you personally and you don’t want to read about it today please do not do that. Much love to you.
Not me writing about mental health again. Don’t I have anything else to say? No, I do not. There won’t be any details about horrific medication induced nightmares in this post though, if you want to read about those you can go back to my Living With Depression posts – possibly the world’s most cheerful trilogy. No, today I wanted to write a little bit about Mental Health Awareness week. Mental health! Are you aware?
I don’t want to suggest there is no value in awareness campaigns, of course there is. The more awareness and acceptance there is for people with mental ill health, the better. Talking about our struggles is important and I wrote three posts about what it’s like to live with depression, so if I were to say the conversation around it is of no value that would sound very very silly. But when I log in to Instagram and Twitter and see all these infographics and posters espousing the vital importance of mental health awareness, I find myself thinking ‘yeah, and what?’
It’s all well and good trying to make everyone aware of what mental illness is and what it looks (or doesn’t look) like and how you might be able to help somebody you love who is suffering, but awareness alone will not go nearly far enough to actually address the problem and make real, life-changing improvements. It is an important aspect, sure, but at the moment it can feel like it is the only thing actually happening. If we are truly serious about tackling the mental health crisis – which affects predominantly young people (75% of mental health problems are established by the age of 24)– we have to start making concrete improvements to the world we are currently living in and start building towards a future that doesn’t seem quite so unbearably bleak.
We cannot expect the mental health of young people to get any better if we are still rapidly approaching climate catastrophe. Nor can we expect it to improve if the prospect of owning our own homes keeps getting further out of reach. Nor will it improve if our government consistently shows utter disdain for the young, the poor, or basically anybody who isn’t a conservative party member. Or if the media landscape continues to be hostile towards minority communities (I am thinking specifically of trans people here, with this being a particularly nasty and prevalent ‘discussion’ at the moment).
How can we expect people to think positively about the future when we are just about reaching the point where our planet is irretrievably fucked and is on its way to inhabitability? Perhaps things won’t completely break down in our lifetime – we might be going on coastal holidays to Crawley because our favourite seaside town (obviously Brighton) has been engulfed by the sea but hey, at least we won’t have to travel as far and temperatures will be positively tropical in October half term. But what about our potential children who will be spending their half terms on Crawley Beach? Do we really want to bring another generation into a world that, at best, will be an awful place to live because of the effects of climate change?
And what about the quality of life we can expect now and in the future? There are currently two million people in this country having to skip meals because they can’t afford to feed themselves and our government seems to think that is absolutely fine, and clearly so do a lot of the population. The lives of people in poverty are subject to thousands of tweets and columns about how, actually, it is easy to feed a family for 20 pounds per week, all you have to do is buy a bag of mince and some potatoes and chew on them raw every day of the week and you will enjoy it you ungrateful scab! Perhaps you should have worked harder so your parents could send you to a nice school and then you’d have a job writing for the Daily Mail, even though you have no talent for writing and your opinions are essentially one step away from ‘just let the poors die!’ And don’t you dare have a television because god forbid you have any enjoyment in your life, sell that thing and get more potatoes! Just this week there was a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of a food bank. Celebrating! The opening of a food bank! The need for food banks should be shameful. The government is so unable (or unwilling) to take care of the basic needs of the population so we have to rely on donations to food banks so people can feed themselves. This is not something that should be celebrated, it is something we should look upon as a damming indictment of a government that is failing in its most basic duties and we should be fucking angry about it.
And what about the mental health of minorities in this country? The government recently excluded trans people from a ban on conversion therapy and said that trans people could be excluded from single sex services for ‘justifiable and proportionate’ reasons. It seems to me rather obvious that the mental health of a group of people would suffer when they are being denied the same human rights afforded to other people. The media attitude towards trans people, particularly in this country, can be very hostile and there is a lot of hateful, damaging language used. I imagine most of you know who the most high profile culprit of this is, and I would just like to say that her books are very bad and the recent film spin offs are even worse and she is really terrible! When we look back in a few years and reflect on how trans rights are being discussed now I imagine we will be ashamed, and we need to be the people who affect change now.
So yes, let’s make sure everyone is aware of different mental illnesses and let’s break down the stigma and barriers to talking about our struggles, but let’s also start addressing real world issues that are root causes of why a lot of people are suffering in the first place. Talking can be an effective tool to lift people up, but it is absolutely vital that we improve the material circumstances which lead to so many people suffering with whatever mental illnesses they have.
Scholey Scribbles 