User:Mental health2IUM

A layman’s self-interrogation of mental health

Mental health is as important if not more important than physical health. Physical exercises or training should not be viewed as something to do only when you are overweight or to have problems. However it should be a lifestyle, a daily need to maintain physical health and improve your quality of life. Mental health on the other hand is still misunderstood or perhaps underrated by many. There are a lot of misconceptions hence the stigma around it. Therapy is viewed as a need only when you are sick, only when it’s prescribed seldom do you find a person going to therapy on their own. I remember a time when going to the gym or training was not so popular, when it wasn’t fashionable, when it was only for the obese or bodybuilders and special people. Now it is more common and a lot more people exercise on a regular although it’s not a norm yet, there’s no stigma around it, it’s now fashionable to go to the gym. I believe we need to view therapy or mental health like fitness. Therapy shouldn’t be the last resort but rather a way of maintaining mental health, a way of helping extract the best out of us and ensure we reach out potential. Therapy should be normalized to the point where it becomes a norm, it becomes fashionable. There’s a lot of toxicity in society today and maybe that has escalated our need for therapy, maybe that has fast tracked our mental illnesses and definitely contributed to the current status quo. Whatever reasons or factors brought us here, we need to realize that as with fitness the only way to beat it is to make it a lifestyle. Make therapy part of your lifestyle, make it a part of your daily, weekly or at the very least a part of your monthly routine. I’m not sure why the  sudden need to create awareness with regards to mental health has stemmed from but it’s urgent and it’s here. How did we get to this point? You may ask. What brought us here? What are the contributing factors? There are so many questions that will require great introspection and investigation, questions that will require a deep dive into our past as a people, nation, country and as a family. When and if we attempt to do a deep dive into the origins of mental illness or lack of mental health in our society, it’ll waste the limited time that we have to find possible solutions or at least to mitigate the situation. We’ll spend more studying problems than actually working to find solutions. Will it be possible to find the root cause to such a complex issue? Will the causes be generic or perhaps too personal as we are different individuals. To a certain extent, one may conclude that it does matter how we got here, it doesn’t matter what contributed. We are here, so how do we get out of this situation.

The mindset that got you into the situation is not the mindset that will get you out. The thinking that brought us here, will not help us solve the problem. It may just delay our progress if anything. How can we take steps towards improving our mental health? I’d say it starts with the mindset, how and what do we think about mental illnesses and mental health. Most importantly, how do we view its victims? What is our believe around it, can we be victims or do we have a biased view? Are we the ones who are quick to judge instead of trying to empathize with someone? Do we have a basic understanding of mental health issues? For a long time there was a stigma around going to the gym or people that go to the gym. There were many misconceptions around going to the gym, till today you find a few people who don’t understand why they need to exercise or be physically active. I for one, I’m glad that exercising is now fashionable, it’s common practice and very much wide spread. Can we say the same about mental health? I'm not expert on the matter and o definitely don’t have all if any answers. But I have an opinion that I’d like to share. Mental health should be viewed the same way we view physical health.

We should encourage and find ways to maintain it, and if one suffers from mental illness please freely and openly get treated for it. I long for the day when it’ll be normal to say I’m going for a check up at the therapist the same way we say I’m going for a check up at the doctors. Nobody to look at you weird or feel like you’re strange or spoiled. Especially among men, therapy is considered to be taboo. Not just therapy but talking about one’s feelings or expressing yourself is frowned upon. Men must be strong and being strong means men must not talk about their feelings or be emotional, yet society expects the same strong men to have compassion and be loving. It is a pity that society looks down on supposed soft men or men who are in touch with their emotions. Women in particular want a strong willed men, bold and firm but also emotionally vulnerable not knowing that men often suppressed their emotions in order to be the strong men that society looks up to. It is deeper and perhaps more complex than that, but the simple fact of the matter is men can’t be expected to be strong and soft yet when they express hurt or pain they are stigmatized against.

That contributes to the reasons why most men don’t talk about their feelings, why they can’t open up to people, why they don’t deal with emotions in a healthy way. Today we are talking about mental health a lot but not enough awareness is spread around the little steps that we can take to alleviate the stigma around it. A few years ago fitness was for fat people or weird people but yet when an overweight person walks into a gym people look at them like they don’t belong, till today some people treat overweight people like that at the gym. It’s like laughing at a sick person for going to the hospital, although that’s not as common and people are more receptive. The new stigma is mental health especially among men. Today men are more likely to suffer from mental health compared to women. When men make their feelings known, they risk becoming a meme or a laughing stock in society. So where do we go from here, so many problems and so many issues? What’s the solution, where is the silver lining in this dark cloud or mental illness? Our habits. Small habits make a big difference, not immediately but eventually it will. We now understand the importance of physical health and fitness. It’s about time we normalize mental health and fitness. We train our bodies every day, we even have trainers and coaches to guide us through the process. We now need to normalize training our minds and because it’s a new phenomenon we all need to get coaches to guide us through the first few sessions until we find our footing and are able to navigate on our own for a while but from time to time we’ll need to consult with the coach aka therapist to evaluate where we are.

By Joraó Verde