This weeks is mental health week in Canada – not mental illness week. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, “We all have mental health, just as we all have physical health. Mental health is more than the absence of mental illness. It’s a state of well-being.”
This is true. We all do have mental health. And mental health is important. But what we need in society is mental illness week not mental health week.
Mental Health Affects Everyone
Mental health affects everyone and thus, mental health week, I suppose. But funds used for things like “mental health” and “mental health week” are going to who some of us call the “worried well.” These are people without mental illnesses with the same worries and cares of anyone else. Certainly life’s events can negatively affect these people’s mental health. But, really? Mental health week? We need to spend funds on “mental health” that really should be going to mental illness?
Mental Illness Affects Everyone
I would argue that while mental health affects everyone, and is important on a personal basis, mental illness affects everyone and is important on a societal basis because while yucky mental health can make you feel bad, mental illness can make you feel dead. And not just that, but people with mental illness actively cost society money in terms of healthcare costs, loss of work time and in countless other ways.
For example, did you know that people with schizophrenia take up more hospital beds in Canada than any other illness? People with schizophrenia take up 8% of all hospital beds. That’s one-in-12 beds being taken up by a single mental illness. And that’s illness with a capital “ill.” Not a “mental health issue.” Oh, and funding for schizophrenia research is lower than it is for any other major illness in Canada.
And what are we not talking about? Mental illness. What are we talking about? The fluffy bunny concept of airy-fairy mental health.
I Talk about Mental Health and Mental Illness
I freely admit that I call myself a “mental health writer.” There are many reasons for this but mostly, it casts a broad net over the topics I write about – which is accurate.
What I also do, however, is talk about mental illness. Pretty much every day. And I try really hard not to call things “mental health issues” when really they’re mental illnesses. And what I want is mental illness awareness, I couldn’t care less about mental health awareness.
Well, it would be fairer to say mental health awareness can do its thing without bothering me, except for the fact that every dollar spent on fluffy bunny, air-fairy mental health is one dollar that is not spent on real mental illnesses.
Mental Health Week in Canada
Look, I’m not trying to bash the Canadian Mental Health Association here. They do a lot of good for a lot of people and I like a lot of their programs. I just think that framing the issue as “mental health week” is insulting to people who are sick and actually need help. What we need is awareness to combat people’s prejudice against mental illness and not try to make more people aware of counselling for their “mental wellness.”
Standing on the other side for a second, I’d like to point out that before I was diagnosed there was a constant series of signs I had a problem.
People think about their physical health and “wellness”, and this sometimes leads them to get that physical they’ve been avoiding, or making an appointment about a pain they’ve been ignoring. It’s not surprising that when some of these people decide to see a doctor something medically wrong, and serious, is identified.
When I was younger I wandered through the world, alienated. And I wonder, what would I have thought of “mental health” as a concept? I know that when I was a kid, no one thought about it at all, and my cycles got worse and worse until I eventually did crash my life.
Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything. But, maybe if I or someone had put the breaks on one cycle sooner my brain wouldn’t be as damaged, and my life would be different. Better? I don’t know. But I suspect there are a lot of people in every generation out their, like I was. Hell, maybe if they learned stress reduction techniques at 23 they might have been able to make it through.
It’s apparently the case that there is a combination of predisposition and environmental factors which contribute to mental illness. A big factor is “fluffy-bunny” stress and anxieties. If you give people the airy-fairy mental health, some of them might never end up actually experiencing the mood disorders they are predisposed to.
As a person with a decent-sized case of Bipolar Disorder, I share your “eye roll”. But, at the same time, I would kind of hope that a 23 year old, or someone’s mother-a-little-in-denial might be willing to think about a “mental health” issue and look for help when they wouldn’t be willing to admit to a “mental illness” until it was too late.
It’s possible someone might end up not-dead, or even not-as-sick or, potentially, even not-sick.
If you caught them early enough, and if you were concerned about their mental health.
The approach taken by those organising Mental Health Week may be very superficial. That wouldn’t surprise me at all. But I think the issue of mental health is crucial. To make it Mental Illness Week would make it only about the minority of people who have actually been diagnosed or would be diagnosed as “mentally ill”. The issue of mental health is much bigger and deeper than this.
The essence of mental health is unconditional self-acceptence. What makes this important is that it is only because, as a species, we have a shortage of such self-acceptance that we have to deal with such things as war, poverty, loneliness, drug addiction, etc. And it is because of this lack of unconditional self-acceptance that our species’ survival is threatened by overpopulation, pollution and destruction of ecosystems.
Hatred, prejudice, selfishness, addiction to material things… All of these are but symptoms of the real problem, which is the psychological black hole which opens up in us when we lose our capacity to self-accept. We take the frustration of our self-contempt out on others or we try to fill that hole with “stuff”.
A world founded on mental health, i.e. on unconditional self acceptance, would be one in which the greatest joy would come from cooperating with others to heal the wounds we have inflicted on the world and on each other, and finding ways to relieve in others any form of suffering which is physical rather than psychological in its origin.
So, even if you suffer from a mental illness which is biological in origin, the issue of others mental health should be of concern to you, because the healthier they are the better they will be able to help you with any problems you have.
Complete Mental Illness Recovery is about as realistic as Pray the Gay Away! Good Luck with that! LOL There’s obviously such thing as remission and doing well, but “Once a Pickle, never a Cucumber Again!”
What’s in a name? She goes,
And then she sighs
And picks her nose,
And wipes it on her shirt…
..I mean…A rose by any other name would smell as sweet!
Rude Shakespeare aside, I think “Mental Health Week” enables the public to paddle their feet at the edge of the lake a bit. To paddle their feet, and start to imagine what it might be like to be drowned.
Maybe one day these normals will stop looking @ mental illness in the way it is portrayed in movies.
Or in literature,or even sometimes online..
Learn that we deserve dignity & humanity & respect.
As ALL PEOPLE,THAT ARE SUFFERING DO.
I think it’s sad that in in 2015, we haven’t moved further regarding MI views.
Mental illness cheerleader here,just wish……we could all make a positive difference in the the world.
I consider myself mentally Unwell…there’s no right or wrong …whatever floats your boat
Cheers ,:-) Sandra.
I know, I write in here all the time. Scroll down if you prefer not to read!
I wear an orange wristband 24/7 stamped MIAW – Mental Illness Awareness Week, which is held from 04-10 October in 2015. I’ll observe that week, not this one. Awareness of mental illness and its impact are what’s missing more than anything else in this gigantic branch of medicine.
In Canada it’s sponsored by “The Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health.” (How silly! At least in the USA, “NAMI” can be pronounced.)
I think everyday should be mental illness awareness day,instead of misunderstanding/ stigma day
See now it’s become the designer of mental illnesses ( Patty Duke,formerly Amy Winehouse & Kurt Cobain
( RIP) presently Catherine Zeta Jones,Charlie Sheen….possibly Courtney Love.
Like the cool mental illness to have,if you are male or female,from Hollyweird to Toronto Canada…knows no
boundaries,race,religion,sex,or life experience.
Sadly,I feel,I’m 56 don’t think I will see better meds with less side effects before I pass on.
Yes like someone said,here runs a common thread,this is what this hellacious disease does to you.
You are no longer you….at least that’s bit of of the trivia I go through…..
There are no rights or no wrongs,as we all have lived different stories / diagnosed different types bipolar….
All we can do is simply try & share our stories,
It’s thearupatic / empathetic ….no I’m not religious at all….I do believe in karma very much……
Keep using our brains!!!
Crucial,I’d have a mantra still do,no matter how bad…..they won’t CANT CONTROL MY BRAIN
Yes the SICK PART
BUT …..THE REST,IS MINE….THANK YOU
Here in hospital is only 72 h hold….then you unless you are severely violent YOU CAN LEAVE against MA
I nearly need…..but as my sister was sick & crying I toughed it out.
Worst is guilt / shame.
Ciao
I am still disturbed with this notion of mental “illness” RECOVERY movement…. or awareness… or theory.
I work for a company, a very large company now that it and a much larger company came together this year, who provides utilization/clinical review & payment services for MH/SA/DD. I process claims.
We received a communique from our new head office that this month was Mental Health Awareness month and as such; we would have communiques throughout the month regarding…. ta da…. recovery.
No one recovers from mental illness.
On that note, and still agitated… I thought to myself, on my drive home yesterday… WHY are we called Clients or Consumers when if you go to say a Cardiologist, we are Patients?
Is it because those in charge of us (Psychiatrists, Nurses, Therapists, etc.)… think we are buying their services? Duh… yeah.
Whereas, if I go to say the Cardiologist… i am “needing” his/her services? Uhm, yeah.
Cause it’s that MEDICAL world that has it designated differently… for psych, we are clients or consumers or recipients or beneficiaries… for medical, we are patients.
I am a patient PERIOD. I got no problem with that label.
I agree with the basic point that a distinction between mental health and mental illness needs to be made. The reason that you get ‘mental health’ talk is because there are a lot of people that go through acute episodes of mental illness. I think it is an effort to make acute sufferers feel comfortable about addressing their needs without dealing with a ‘crazy’ stigma.
I am not trying to downplay acute episodes of mental illness, but a ‘mental illness week’ needs to focus on people with chronic mental illness. I’m tired of stats like “1 in 4 Americans suffer from mental illness every year” that try to normalize and de-stigmatize feeling depressed. That’s all good, but don’t lump those people in with people like us that suffer from mental illness on a daily basis without the hope of a full recovery. There needs to be specific attention paid to the 1 in 17-18 that suffer from major chronic disorders.
Hi Natasha, excellent blog as always! I just wanted to note that there is a Mental Illness Awareness Week held every fall as coordinated by Mood Disorders Assn. there is a Faces campaign that goes along with it. Perhaps put in your name as one of the “Faces”? Keep up the great work!
FWIW, at least in the States, the first week in October is Mental Illness Awareness Week. I think it’s primarily, if not exclusively promoted by NAMI here, so it may not be observed in Canada. But if support can be mustered up there for a Mental Illness Awareness Week in Canada, there’s a calendar slot that could match up with existing observances in the U.S., if not elsewhere as well.
When I speak about the “mental illness system”, I am speaking of the most human-rights destructive system ever invented, and therefore, I am not speaking of a mental health system, as the system itself prefers to call itself. The mental illness system promotes the concept of destroying human rights upon the altar of saving one’s mental health–which is a misnomer. Thus, I will say here that I agree that calling things what they are–as opposed to the numerous euphemisms the mental illness system uses to paint itself in a better light than it deserves–is important.
Good grief. I thought bipolar sounded better than what they called it when I was a child — manic depressive. Are they trying to come up with another warm and fuzzy name for one of the most destructive illnesses known to man?
I would just like to mention the person that didn’t like the label of “bipolar” because it sounds too negative and therefore somehow in her mentally ill head didn’t need any treatment for it, ended up having some real consequences. She ended up pregnant and was off living in a homeless shelter because it was easier than maintaining her own home. After all you move into a homeless shelter, they will get you right in if you’re pregnant and you’re only responsible for cooking one meal a month, so I guess its kind of mini vacation if you actually have a home to go back too. Anyway the State ended up taking away her baby because her refusal to pretty much deal with anything and just expecting everything to just work out wonderfully on its own led them to believe she was unfit to take care of a child. Bipolar can come into you’re life completely wreck havoc like a Hurricane and part of the disease can be to not recognize what is going on or the consequences of those actions. That’s why recognizing things for what they are and doing SOMETHING, yes ANYTHING about it is the most positive step I believe anyone can make. By the way, it manifests itself in many ways loosing a job, a divorce, loosing a home, not being able to see your kids, being careless and being injured, or even becoming homeless. If anyone doesn’t believe me ask other people who have bipolar how its affected them… and I’m sure you’ll get an earful.
God forbid that we should talk about “mental illness”! We might think we are sick!
I agree with Chris — it is about the specter of positive thinking whose effectiveness, incidentally, has been disproven by clinical trials. It is better for us to think that we are sick because then we do something about our condition. Mental illness is a real deal. Stop trying to include everyone in one big circus tent by denying its existence in favor of a warm and fuzzy epithet.
Yeah, I get the first comment. Catch me if I’m wrong but I think this has something to do with the people that don’t like to mention anything “negative” so they play around with the words until it sounds more “positive” as if that’s going to make a difference. Someone I know was once asked, “If she was bipolar” and she responded, “I don’t like to call it that.” As if cutting the cake differently is going to somehow make a difference. What it is in my mind is an unwillingness to address the REAL and UNDERLYING issues and like you said give it positive, fluffy sounding name because isn’t that just Special :)