What Has Shaped Your Attitude And Belief About Mental Health And Mental Ill Health?
We live in a world where we focus so much more on our physical health, but just because we place so much focus on it, does not mean that we are actually looking after it, only that it is more socially accepted to talk about it with others. People ask one another how they are all the time and mostly we respond by telling them how we are feeling physically. Everything from Feeling tired or run down, experiencing flu like symptoms or perhaps not sleeping.
Of course all of these things also affect our mental health,(everything is connected) but we rarely make the connection, instead focusing on our sore eyes or sore head. Because it is normal for us to wait, until things begin to manifest themselves in a physical way, before we take action.
On top of that, so many find it difficult to talk about their feelings and when they do, most people tend to become uncomfortable. Most of us come from cultures where talking about our mental health is something that is not embraced or encouraged.
Instead we are told to strive for success and being sad or feeling unbalanced is not something that people feel encouraged to talk about. Instead we tend to leave those things behind closed doors, closing doors within ourselves also. Being unbalanced is often seen as a weakness and certainly not something we are encouraged to disclose.
My first experience of this was when I was in my teens and volunteering at a community centre, where adults who lived in supported accommodation came to socialize and do different activities. Whilst I was there, I met a young man who was from the village I lived close to. I knew all of his family and yet I had no idea who he was, no one ever spoke about him.
He joined the army after school, went into service and came back with P.T.S.D. His family were ashamed of his behaviour, so send him to a psychiatric hospital, when he was discharged from there he was send to supported accommodation and they never spoke about him.
I was shocked and so angry when I heard his story. I asked my parents and sure enough they knew him, but said no one ever spoke about him since he returned from the army. This only fuelled my anger, at how unjust his family and his community were treating him.
After I finished volunteering there, I spend a few days volunteering in an old psychiatric hospital. There I met an old women who had been institutionalized since her late teens. She had been handed over to the local nunnery as she was pregnant out of wedlock. She stayed with the nuns till she birthed her baby, a baby that was taken from her by the church. She was heartbroken and distraught, the church put her in the psychiatric hospital and left her there.
I met her when she was in her 70’s, she had never left that hospital and because of that she suffered greatly with her mental health. She had a doll with her, which she was convinced was her baby and every day she cared for it as though it was. She would become so distressed if anyone tried to take that doll from her!
She was so institutionalized, that she was now unable to live outside of the hospital.
Meeting this woman really opened my eyes, to how a lack of understanding and a lack of love for others can have such a detrimental affect on them. It showed me how so many suffer at the hands of others and how fragile our well being is, when those we trust, take advantage of us.
My heart was broken meeting this women and writing this now, brings back those feelings and I feel my anger rising once again. Because how can we treat people like this, especially when they need us the most!
I ended up studying mental health and working in the community. Because from an early age I saw first hand, how unjust the world could be, against those who suffered from mental ill health and how the very system that was meant to protect you, could end up damaging you.
<I felt such a strong desire to prevent anything like that happening again.
Then when I entered into the mental health system as a nurse, I saw first hand how the first line of treatment is usually always medication and how that medication can really exasperate the problem. These medications created even more problems and I witnessed, how those who were at their most vulnerable, were at times treated like guinea pigs by their consultants and the pharmaceutical companies.
I also saw how mental ill health, affects everyone and that unless we are surrounded by people who care about us, we can really begin to suffer. I saw how a lack of awareness and understanding leads to so many becoming isolated and ostracized. That when we become isolated, our symptoms intensify and our ill health worsens.
It was clear to me, that those who are most sensitive suffer the worst, those who have suffered abuse at the hands of others and those who have been preyed upon. So often, I witnessed amazingly gifted people suffer, because people would not listen to them or even attempt to accept them for who they were. That they were deemed eccentric or crazy, just because they saw things more clearly than others did.
We are all expected to fit into a world that does not leave a lot of room for individuality. We have strict rules about what is deemed acceptable behaviour. For example, screaming is a great way to release tension, yet if you are to do so regularly in a public space, you would soon be deemed crazy!
Our mental health is at times very fragile, depending on who we have in our lives and the circumstances that we are in. In some communities those who think outside of the box are celebrated and embraced, in other places they are shunned and labelled.
Of course there are so many circumstances that can really affect our well being. But yet,imagine if we were allowed to grief in our own way, to release pain in our own way without so many restrictions placed upon us by society, how different would things be.
If we, were really allowed to be who we desire, who we are called to be. If we were allowed to express ourselves as we see fit! If we were allowed to take back control of our health and deal with our unbalances as they arrive instead of suppressing ourselves.
Our mental health goes hand in hand with our physical and spiritual health, they make us whole, we neglect one and we neglect them all. I am still learning, just as I continue to grow, as I continue to interact with the world.
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