It’s easy to take for granted the fact that mental health is at the forefront of discussions surrounding our generation, more so than ever before. It would be difficult for it not to be, with one in five Irish young adults experiencing mental health difficulties, and many others going undiagnosed. The mental health of so many of our college peers is under huge pressure, even if it’s not necessarily noticeable, with a worryingly thin line between coping well and coping barely. While we are comfortable acknowledging that we are in the midst of a mental health crisis, the stigma surrounding mental illness is very much alive, as we are not yet entirely comfortable with discussing our mental health, or even hearing about others’.
People are often uncomfortable with reading and hearing about other mental health accounts because they are, by their very nature, extremely personal. It’s uncomfortable to hear about people at their most vulnerable and terrifying hearing the amount of pain that a mental illness can cause. The media is often dissuasive of dialogue regarding sensitive subject matter: we are “Generation Snowflake”, easily offended and always quick to voice it. Yet we are also constantly reminded of the immense pressures on our generation and the overwhelming expectation placed on us to succeed. With no open space in which to discuss these pressures, it is difficult to understand how we are meant to process them.
Talking about mental health is not self-indulgent. In fact, it is necessary. While a discussion of an individual’s mental health is naturally focused on the self, it is not necessarily self-absorbed. Self-absorbed discussion of mental health can exist, but in my experience, this is rare. Those that are brave enough to share stories of their mental illness, or discuss their mental health, should be heavily encouraged, and not feel as though they are to be scrutinised for talking about themselves. We need to be more comfortable in telling people how we are doing.
Talking about mental health is not self-indulgent
College is a particularly important time to look out for ourselves and others in terms of mental health. Aside from the stress of college work and, for many, learning to work with newfound independence, there is also a certain stress in acknowledging that college is an environment which encourages and rewards buzzy and energetic personalities. In a college setting filled with overachievers, it’s not uncommon to feel as though you’re failing and that comparatively, everyone else is succeeding.
Social media works to aggravate this. While we remind ourselves that it’s useless to compare ourselves to others, and that it’s impossible to do everything, it’s often easier to be harder on yourself than others. Knowing how to navigate these negative feelings is not easy. We’ve heard it before: it’s OK not to be OK. But I think there’s always a small part of us that has a hard time accepting that it’s actually alright for me not to be okay. While we can happily propagate this philosophy, a blip in our own mental stability is extremely hard to accept. In a survey done by St Patrick’s Health Services in 2015, 67 per cent agreed that Irish people view being treated for a mental health difficulty as a sign of personal failure. While this statistic has remained this high, there are still leaps to be taken in attitudes towards mental health.
There are so many who share common experience in their feelings of complete isolation
We all have mental health that we have to maintain. While we certainly do not all suffer from mental illness, we all have the capability to show some compassion for those who do and also appreciate that contrary to what the stigma suggests, these people that do are not so different or weird compared to those that do not. In the same St Patrick’s survey, approximately one in four said that they do not believe that Irish people would be willing to accept someone with a mental health issue as a close friend. This statistic is frustrating because it reveals that, for many, seeing beyond a person’s mental illness is a challenge. Bringing an open discussion of mental health to the forefront would change this mentality.
Breaking the stigma surrounding mental health would work to improve, but by no means cure, the mental health crisis that currently plagues us. Let’s understand that while not every person is under obligation to discuss their mental health, they should feel comfortable doing so. Let’s give people the opportunity to talk about how they are in the midst of a mental health crisis, about how difficult it is to both experience mental health problems and be close to those who do, and about how there are so many who share common experience in their feelings of complete isolation. Let’s talk, and not feel like we have to apologise for it.
