Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental Health Awareness Week is an annual event in the UK. It's been going for the last 21 years. I've never heard about it before. Perhaps now it's come to the fore due to millions more feeling the impact of a sick society. As bad as the Covid pandemic has been and is, it has perhaps in someways led to or permitted a wider conversation taking place about mental health.

In the UK mental health is being spoken about much more than ever before. It's a good thing that this is happening. The focus is mostly on what these days are called 'common mental health problems'.

Back in the day people presenting with such issues were disparagingly labelled as neurotic or even 'the worried well'. Varying degrees and types of anxiety and depression in the main. Social distancing en mass and for a protracted amount of time it seems has led to more people identifying with these conditions. There's almost it seems some kudos to be had in the owning the diagnosis. Social media, TV and celebrities feasting on it for likes, air time and advertising revenue.

The approach to supporting and treating people with mental health problems has been and is very slow to change. The biomedical model continues to hold top trumps. A position historically gained and maintained to date by virtue of governmental and societal apathy, blame and willful misunderstanding. Those struggling and or unable to keep up with or fit in to the norms and expectations of the day are pathologised. Victim blaming masquerading as some kind of moral paternalism.

Medication despite it's very questionable efficacy is still often considered the first line of treatment. Indeed the Mental Health Foundation advises people who are concerned that they are developing a mental health problem should seek the advice and support of their GP as a matter of priority. If in distress and needing immediate help people unable to see a GP are advised to visit the local A&E (accident and emergency department of a hospital).

Medication may well offer some short term relief. A prescription has come to be what's expected. The pharmaceutical industry has made sure of that. A diagnosis and a script for tablets is enough to free up doctors consulting rooms within the standard 10 min appointment time. The A&E department provides little more than risk management for those in crisis. Not primarily for the person but rather to reduce any exposure to liability that may be attributed to the absence of other more suitable interventions and support.

The Mental Health Foundation says that the week is all about starting conversations about mental health and the things in our daily lives that can affect it. This year they are suggesting that individuals, communities and governments think about connecting with nature and how nature can improve our mental health.

Connecting with nature is for sure a good thing and may well boost peoples mood and sense of well-being. However, to choose nature as the theme for this years campaign seems almost disingenuous and bordering on complicity.

To halt the predicted 2 million additional cases of adults in the UK with mental health problems by 2030, a national preventative mental health strategy should be developed, fully resourced and implemented. A missed opportunity on prevention - The Mental Health Foundation 2016

With that in mind how about calling out facets of modern day life that run counter to the health and welfare of the country? How about starting conversations that explore norms and expectations of everyday life that lead people to feeling they are not good enough? How about holding the government to account for economic policies that put the business interests of the very wealthy before the well-being, good health and security of the population?

If mental health is a sickness that can be treated with medication it seems wholly irresponsible to merely treat the symptoms and ignore the causes. It's no secret that smoking and obesity increases the risk of serious health problems. No one is allowed to ignore that. No one gets treated for heart disease or cancer without being told to make some lifestyle changes. Why then is it okay ignore causes of common mental health problems? They're common not because people are 'sick in the head'. They're common because we live in a sick society. I guess it's okay though because that's business. After all we could always just go and look at some trees.