I have noticed some people talk about abandoning the language of speaking about things in terms of "mental health" because the whole idea of "mental health" implies a web of associations and assumptions as well as an implicit compliance with the ideology of mainstream psychiatry. This sounds like something I would say.. or would have said maybe. These days it doesn't seem quite as important to me. I often put it in quotes, it's an easy way to mention the topic at hand, because the use of the term is so popular. What do you think? Should we abandon the use of the term "mental health" completely?
Personally I think if someone is in a state of distress, or crisis, going through a difficult time etc, it doesn't seem right to say they have "bad mental health" I think that they are just going through something, an intense process, a difficult time.
But I think there is also a very interesting philosophical conversation to be had here, of how important are the words we use anyways? Maybe by giving up certain terms you divest some form of energy from the whole ideology that is inherent in them. But what I find is so often I am having these conversations with like minded people anyways so I can talk about "Schizophrenia" without having to go into all that stuff about how these labels don't have much science behind them, and the whole diagnostic system is just a cultural construct etc. We've had that conversation before, you know where I stand with this stuff.. I can say "so and so was labeled with this" and I don't have to remind you every time that I don't buy into labels or the "mental health" construct but we can still talk about what goes on in that system.
One topic of interest for me recently has been the idea of literalism, or taking language very literally. For example, Mental Health always seems like an odd choice of words to me, because I think so much of what people talk about there, anxiety, depression, paranoia or whatever, has more to do with emotion than the mind, more to do with the heart than the head.
But of course, when you bring the topic of the heart into this, all of a sudden you run into a problem if you are stuck on literalism. Mental Health is part of the Health Care Industry.. and people who take care of the heart, do so literally in terms of open heart surgery, or the use of pacemakers, even heart transplants. Mental Health as we understand it, doesn't have to do with the heart as the organ in the body, it has to do with the brain. And this is all very literal, from the mainstream point of view, the mind is from the brain, and at one point in time if you had a problem with your mind they would solve that by chopping up your brain with a lobotomy! Now they've toned it down a bit and they try to solve the mind problem with some sort of drug that goes to work there. Because it's all very literal, a problem with the mind must be a problem with the brain.
And while their may not be a materialist basis for the heart as an organ playing a role in psychiatry, I think it's safe to say that it is understood when we say that deep grief, and human suffering are very much afflictions of the heart. But this is a more symbolic association, this is a different set of associations to say that Mental Health is really about the heart not the brain, and it seems to be a territory that is avoided in standard Mental Health practice.
I think it is safe to say that a Mental Health System that does not recognize the important role of the Heart runs the risk of being a Heartless System. If we as a society deny the call of the heart in our suffering and distress we run the risk of becoming a Heartless Society.
Maybe the problem of calling it Mental Health gives away the cause of the problem in how we label it. We get sick when we start to live an overly Mental kind of life.. we become deranged by living in our minds, by viewing the problem as a strictly mental issue. In a literal way we are starting to understand the importance of Gut Health and it's role in so called "mental health" as apparently more serotonin is produced in the gut than the brain.. Instead of seeing your medical doctor you might see a naturopath to restore the balance to your gut, we are beginning to understand what the gut needs to be healthy.. but there is still a question here, are we also beginning to understand our Gut Feelings?
Do we really think the source of all these problems is simply just some glitch in our mental activity or is something fundamentally wrong at a Gut Level?
More and more we are learning how important it is to listen to the Gut, to listen to the Heart.
And yet with the popular language we use, it's the Mind that always gets the attention! That's the mind for you! The minds always going to try to distract you and throw you off with a bunch of thoughts. Maybe the Mind is the big Red Herring in all of this, the stone thrown in the bush. Maybe the reason so many people struggle with mental health is because our language is like a map that leads you to the wrong place.
The Mind's always going to be a bit crazy.. look for sanity in the Heart, the Gut... that's probably a good place to get started at least!
