Today

Today, as very few of you will I’m sure be aware (hey, I wasn’t until a few minutes ago) is World Mental Health Day. I have touched on my own personal experiences of mental health problems before, having spent the last few years suffering from depression, but I feel today is a suitably appropriate time to bring it up again, because this is an issue that, in the modern world, cannot be talked about enough.

Y’see, conservative estimates claim at least 1 in 4 of us will suffer from a mental health problem at some point in our lives, be it a relatively temporary one such as post-natal depression or a lifelong battle with the likes of manic depressive disorder or schizophrenia. Mental health is also in the top five biggest killers in the developed world, through a mixture of suicide, drug usage, self-harming or self-negligence, and as such there is next to zero chance that you will go through your life without somebody you know very closely suffering or even dying as a result of what’s going on in their upstairs. If mental health disorders were a disease in the traditional sense, this would be labelled a red alert, emergency level pandemic.

However, despite the prevalence and danger associated with mental health, the majority of sufferers do so in silence. Some have argued that the two correlate due to the mindset of sufferers, but this claim does not change the fact 9 out of 10 people suffering from a mental health problem say that they feel a degree of social stigma and discrimination against their disability (and yes that description is appropriate; a damaged mind is surely just as debilitating, if not more so, than a damaged body), and this prevents them from coming out to their friends about their suffering.

The reason for this is an all too human one; we humans rely heavily, perhaps more so than any other species, on our sense of sight to formulate our mental picture of the world around us, from the obviously there to the unsaid subtext. We are, therefore, easily able to identify with and relate to physical injuries and obvious behaviours that suggest something is ‘broken’ with another’s body and general being, and that they are injured or disabled is clear to us. However, a mental problem is confined to the unseen recesses of our brain, hiding away from the physical world and making it hard for us to identify with as a problem. We may see people acting down a lot, hanging their head and giving other hints through their body language that something’s up, but everybody looks that way from time to time and it is generally considered a regrettable but normal part of being human. If we see someone acting like that every day, our sympathy for what we perceive as a short-term issue may often turn into annoyance that people aren’t resolving it, creating a sense that they are in the wrong for being so unhappy the whole time and not taking a positive outlook on life.

Then we must also consider the fact that mental health problems tend to place a lot of emphasis on the self, rather than one’s surroundings. With a physical disability, such as a broken leg, the source of our problems, and our worry, is centred on the physical world around us; how can I get up that flight of stairs, will I be able to keep up with everyone, what if I slip or get knocked over, and so on. However, when one suffers from depression, anxiety or whatever, the source of our worry is generally to do with our own personal failings or problems, and less on the world around us. We might continually beat ourselves up over the most microscopic of failings and tell ourselves that we’re not good enough, or be filled by an overbearing, unidentifiable sense of dread that we can only identify as emanating from within ourselves. Thus, when suffering from mental issues we tend to focus our attention inwards, creating a barrier between our suffering and the outside world and making it hard to break through the wall and let others know of our suffering.

All this creates an environment surrounding mental health that it is a subject not to be broached in general conversation, that it just doesn’t get talked about; not so much because it is a taboo of any kind but more due to a sense that it will not fit into the real world that well. This is even a problem in the environment of counselling  specifically designed to try and address such issues, as people are naturally reluctant to let it out or even to ‘give in’ and admit there is something wrong. Many people who take a break from counselling, me included, confident that we’ve come a long way towards solving our various issues, are for this reason resistive to the idea of going back if things take a turn for the worse again.

And it’s not as simple as making people go to counselling either, because quite frequently that’s not the answer. For some people, they go to the wrong place and find their counsellor is not good at relating to and helping them; others may need medication or some such rather than words to get them through the worst times, and for others counselling just plain doesn’t work. But this does not detract from the fact that no mental health condition in no person, however serious, is so bad as to be untreatable, and the best treatment I’ve ever found for my depression has been those moments when people are just nice to me, and make me feel like I belong.

This then, is the two-part message of today, of World Mental Health Day, and of every day and every person across the world; if you have a mental health problem, talk. Get it out there, let people know. Tell your friends, tell your family, find a therapist and tell them, but break the walls of your own mental imprisonment and let the message out. This is not something that should be forever bottled up inside us.

And for the rest of you, those of us who do not suffer or are not at the moment, your task is perhaps even more important; be there. Be prepared to hear that someone has a mental health problem, be ready to offer them support, a shoulder to lean on, but most importantly, just be a nice human being. Share a little love wherever and to whoever you can, and help to make the world a better place for every silent sufferer out there.

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Trains of thought

A short while ago, I realised I wasn’t normal.  Nothing unusual about this- these thoughts pop up in my head from time to time, usually whilst hopping up a staircase shouting ‘bing’ every time I land (yeah, I get weird occasionally). But, this time, I was actually just sitting in a car, driving down a rural lane. These roads are generally hedged on either side, and these hedges are pruned in about November. As such, by February, their previously neat, regular shapes have generally become more shaggy, although still distinguishable, most notably towards the top of the hedge where the shape is still fairly obvious, with some sparse bits of longer hedge extending above the more densely packed mass. The moment I realised that I was being genuinely weird was after half a mile’s enjoyment of a typical game for me under such circumstances- imagining there are lasers coming out of my eyes and staring at the hedge/stragglier bits dividing line, trying to imaginary-cut the top bits off, and remembering to blink every time a lamp post cut across my field of vision.

Such is one example of quite how my brain works. I never formally realised that I always do this upon sight of such hedges, or that I have only said the words ‘happy birthday’ twice in the last 25 or so Facebook birthday messages I’ve written, or that I’ve only recently stopped blinking every time a car goes past when sitting on the top deck of a double-decker bus, or that I have once given serious consideration (upon cutting my finger open), to sticking it in a water glass and not putting a plaster on it, to see a) how long it takes to stop bleeding and b) see how much blood it would produce. The thing is, it took until I started thinking about it that I realised this isn’t how people usually think or behave.

And yet,  I AM normal in so many other ways. I speak like everyone around me, talk on Facebook in a similar style and using similar words to most of my friends, live in a normal house in a normal street in a normal suburban area, am surrounded by normal people, laugh, joke, play cards, chat, wander, do my bits of sport, all like any other normal guy. Normality is, I suppose, entirely relative and field-specific, like so many other things.

What is normality, really? Merely the absence of difference? Maybe a critic would say it is synonymous with boredom and lack of independence, but the people who say that are typically, on a base level normal themselves. Independence does not make you not normal, does not stop you from living in a robot apartment or talking like any other person. It makes you individual to be sure, and makes you different, but abnormal? No. Well, I suppose that at least partly answers the question.

Am I really abnormal? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s just a figment of my mind. Maybe everyone does think like this, and just no-one admits it. Maybe I’m just being self-centred, thinking I’m more different and special than I am. I hope not- those kind of people are some of the most smug, hateful people I’ve ever met. Maybe what I think of as abnormal is exactly the same as how the cynics a la above think of themselves- they think they’re abnormal, just as I do, but, when it comes down to it, they are just like everyone else.

Does it matter? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it’s just a passing thing. Maybe it’s just part of who I am. Maybe nobody I know really notices, maybe they stand out like a mile. I wouldn’t know- I don’t really know anyone who’s different in that way. Or maybe I do? They don’t seem to treat me any different- or do they? Maybe if who I was were different, I would be treated differently. Maybe not. Who can tell?

Ach, I dunno. Not really sure, to be honest, what I’m writing. Certainly don’t know why. I suppose I am, really, fulfilling what it says in that little ‘About’ box- “this is a small viewing hole into my mind”. Well, what you see in front of you here is just my train of thought, running here and there. Condensed a bit, of course, and resized- normally something like this would take 30 seconds to wander through my head, if it were allowed to run its course. This one has been somewhat forcibly drawn out to its present length, been forced to take its time and wait. To pause every few minutes while I change tabs, while I muse around. It’s a weird experience committing a train of thought to  paper. Well, to a server at least. Would that be called e-paper, or does that only refer to a kindle or e-reader. Ach, I don’t know.

Ooh look, starting and finishing a paragraph the same. Symbolism n shit.

I’m not really sure how to end this- trains of thought typically don’t end as such, or at least not in my case. Once in a while a definitive thought comes out of them, but for the majority of the time they just sort of peter out, crushed under the weight of the next one. Like that bit of conversation you really wanted to say before someone butted in with their own thing and the subject got changed, it must be swallowed and forgotten. Or at least stored for another time…