May 12-18 is Mental Health Awareness Week, which aims to encourage people to start a conversation about mental health and recognise that it is just as important as physical health. However, over the past year or so, there has been a backlash against such initiatives in certain sections of the media, the government and the public.
Here’s a look at why mental health is not a passing trend, and why good mental health should be taken seriously, nurtured and valued. If you are struggling with an issue such as anxiety, depression, mood disorders, bereavement or addiction, our City Centre Therapy clinic in Sheffield offers a range of services that can help.
What’s the problem with mental health awareness?
Last year, a government minister declared that “mental health culture has gone too far”. This opened the floodgates for a slew of media articles declaring that people were becoming less able to cope with the normal ups and downs of everyday life.
Other commenters suggested that people with mild forms of conditions such as depression and anxiety were being medicalised too soon, rather than giving themselves time to naturally recover. There are also concerns that mental ill health diagnoses are growing fastest among the young generation of adults (aged 16-27).
Mental health professionals responded by saying that such attitudes only serve to heighten the sense of shame and stigma that many people experience along with their suffering, and can prevent them from reaching out for the support that they need to recover. Poor mental health leads to worse quality of life, and damages relationships and careers.
The dangers of trend-based awareness
It’s now routine to see social media feeds filled with hashtags and campaigns about wellness initiatives, prioritising self-care, and so on. Celebrities are not afraid to speak openly about their mental health struggles, from Prince Harry to Serena Williams.
This progress matters, but the danger is that it can turn mental health into a trend-based issue, and it can be treated in a rather superficial way, reducing it to a set of buzzwords. This undermines the very genuine pain and struggles that many people experience, whether they choose to speak out about it or not.
Awareness campaigns can and do still have their place, giving us a common language and unjudgemental space to talk about mental health, and creating a society that is more open-minded and emotionally literate. We should celebrate the fact that it’s now normal for friends and family to chat about their state of mind, and express themselves confidently.
However, not everyone fits into these simplified narratives, and they may feel pressure to present their struggles in a more socially acceptable way.
Therefore it seems that there is still a long way to go before we can move beyond social-media friendly motivational quotes, and reach a place where mental health is genuinely treated with the same seriousness as physical health.