Mental health – my interpretation
I have things to say about mental health which are opinionated and open to challenge.
First of all I don’t like ‘mental health’ being used as another word for ‘mental illness’ it is a sly and stigmatising way of avoiding reality. I also think they are very different things. As far as I a concerned there is a thing which we can define, loosely admittedly; as mental illness: things like depression, anxiety, bipolar or schizophrenia, caused by a wide mixture of genetic biological environmental and social factors with none of those certain to be the one clear cut cause of illness. Not all of us experience mental illness but a good deal of us do.
Then there is mental health or maybe mental wellbeing which is not mental illness and which affects all of us and which we experience in a wide range of situations and which varies all the time. I would say I have a serious mental illness but in recent years very good levels of wellbeing. Although such things are, to some extent discreet, our mental wellbeing can have an affect on our mental illness and vice versa.
Just now I am not too concerned about illness and more about wellbeing. I may be idealistic and say that I am at my peak when the world is colourful and vibrant and I am engaged with it but that is rare and I suspect both my medication and my illness conspire to make that a remote thing.
For me to engage with a colourful world?
I think I need to be safe. I need to be with people I trust and love and can be silly with. For me to see the colour of the world, I think I need sleep. I need hope and optimism and for that I need the sort of wellbeing I rarely achieve but I think maybe I would attain it first of all by not being ill and secondly, by having all the things so many of us want in our lives. The simple lovely things; a comfortable bed, someone to cuddle in that comfortable bed, food you can linger over and enjoy. Woods to amble in, the sea to sit besides or sail on, autumn leaves and summers sweet peas. For there to be colour I need purpose and things to do and look forward to. I need dogs to walk and stroke and throw sticks for, bunnies to feed. Children to laugh with and grow with. I need glimpses of the extraordinary; a pile of snow to plunge my face in, a surprise holiday. Days alone with the view of the hills and a lap top to write on and the occasional person to talk to in the evening and of course money. Really it gets silly in a way because it is so obvious!
I am unlikely to have good wellbeing if I am in a war, or homeless or hungry or cold or ill. I am even more unlikely to have good wellbeing if I am alone and isolated and have no one to talk to or turn to when I need comfort.
There are so many ingredients to wellbeing and we know them so well but to say do these wellbeing tasks and you will be free of mental illness! There I take issue. I think the ingredients of wellbeing protect us and mean mental illness is less likely or less likely to get worse but I also know that I and many of my friends, discard all these protective factors when we are getting ill.
We stop speaking to family and friends, we stop eating and sleeping and working and looking after ourselves. Without a doubt we know these are the things we need in our lives but they are exactly the things we can no longer maintain when life falls apart.
I think in those situations it is the people around us who can keep us safe and search for all the things that keep us feeling good or if they no longer work then they can hold us safe until we seek the dawn or the flowers of spring or finally, find people and places to hold us safe when they can’t and we are lost so far from sunshine.
What causes us to fall away from colour? I don’t know, for me it may be when I stop taking medication, or it may be the past coming to harass me or people who don’t like me attacking me, or work being too much for me or something as simple as an unexpected argument or rejection causing me to doubt myself; a host of different things can conspire to make me unable to do the things I have always known are good for me. The thing that keeps me safest from that calamity? My family, my friends, places like Jeans Bothy where I feel I belong and where people look out for me.
I am lucky enough to be a small part of some communities but some people, especially those with a mental illness, find their community rejects them, alienates them and leaves them lost far, far, away from comfy beds and cuddles and a nice meal to linger over and that makes me very sad.
Another last vital part of wellbeing is being valued and valuing other people: our villages, towns, cities and countries fail and create toxicity when they discard those who have lost the means to smile and socialise. We harm ourselves when we shun those who make us uncomfortable. To give of yourself, whether that be your time or your smile or a long tight hug. Sometimes that is the most precious gift of all.
[This was first published in the book Peace in Mind published in March 2023, produced and edited by Ann Greer for Jeans Bothy]
[Photo. me and Wendy, March 2023]
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