Wednesday evening and it’s warm enough to need a fan blowing in my general direction. I’m sitting in the B&B on the Isle of Wight tapping away using my iPhone to write whatever comes out.
This is the column I said I wouldn’t write. I did a good job of convincing myself it would be a stupid idea. Leave it alone. Don’t write it. Like all good writers here I am, ignoring my inner editor, and for good reason.
The reason for my caution? I’m taking on a conversation about mental health. A hot topic of the moment. One that is personal to me, since I battle PTSD demons on a daily basis. But, I’m not going to go on about me.
First, I agree that mental health, for many years, got treated like a taboo subject. Nobody spoke about it. Lots of people suffered in silence and many never got the help they needed. A tragic state of affairs. But, I do think we need to tread with caution in the way we are dealing with it today.
There’s some highly skilled folks who’ve pointed out some of the problems.
Dr Lucy Foulkes, a psychologist, said that mental health awareness campaigns lead to people thinking they are struggling with their mental health. When in fact, they are dealing with normal life situations like grief, work stress or in younger people, exam stress.
Another psychologist, Nick Haslem, described how clinical terms have developed scope creep. Their boundaries expanding over time to include an “unpleasant situation” as clinical trauma, “anxiety” replaces feeling nervous and “distress” is reframed as a medical disorder.
Dr Foulkes made another key point. Once everyday emotional distress is labelled as an illness, people often react by dodging the stress triggers.
In psychological terms, avoidance reinforces and worsens anxiety over time rather than building resilience. I know that one. It’s a mate of mine.
The result? People like me can’t get access to the services we need. My diagnosis from several years ago, started with my GP. Then, got confirmed by trained, professional counsellors. After many long and detailed sessions. It is, in other words, a proper, comprehensive diagnosis.
I take medication to help me with it every day. But, when I need a counsellor, I am left with long (months) waits. Or paying to see someone privately.
Consider the scale we are dealing with. One in five adults in the UK now report common mental health symptoms in any given week. Among 16-to-24-year-olds, reported distress has surged dramatically.
For your own benefit, don’t let scope creep happen to you. Trust me, when you get a mental health label, it’s hard to shake. I don’t drive anymore because by the time I’d finished explaining the situation to the DVLA and my insurers? It wasn’t worth the faff. It made me feel worse.
Also, I’m aware these are tricky things for me to be saying. I’m not being selfish. If you need help, go and ask for it, of course you should. And don’t ignore it. Nobody should have to deal with demons, trauma and whatever else in silence.
I did. For several years. Suffice to say, by the time I got help, I’d turned into a shell of a human being. I acknowledge that things are far better these days. A vast improvement on how things used to be.
Ah well, this is the column I didn’t intend to write. It’s written now. But I am glad it is. I’m now going to stick my head in the freezer, it’s still muggy.