Mental Health

As written by a friend on Facebook:

I have seen a lot of the #itsokaynottobeokay movement across my news feed recently and I think it raises some issues worth talking about. 

This movement has been successful in getting general attention for what is a pertinent issue that needs to be thought and talked about well. 

I think it’s important, however, that this doesn’t simply develop into a trend in which people copy and paste the same text, statistics, and pose. This movement is trying to raise real awareness about young people who lose their lives to suicide or are, perhaps, at risk of losing their lives because of the degree to which they suffer in them. 

Evidently, I don’t and can’t see the thought process that goes on behind every post but, going by what I see, I ask: where is there real awareness shown in copying and pasting? Aren’t we meant to be showing this is something we’re willing to talk about, something we personally understand and are willing to help with? For me, a copy and paste doesn’t present the image of having made a proper personal attempt to process and understand the issue at hand. I think it’s a way of saying as little as possible. When, on the other hand, I see posts where people have added a personal message, however long, I invariably find them more positive and inspiring. 

Essentially, this is a collective issue that we can only help improve and resolve if we inspire each other to engage with it. It deserves and is owed more effort and attention from us. It won’t just go away or take care of itself - really it looks as though it’ll get worse with each subsequent generation, so let us move now. 

I remember discussing the suicide of someone we knew with my mother and her asking: ‘what makes these young men kill themselves?’ The implication was why, with so much of their lives still ahead of them, do they do it? Why do young men, who should be coming into their prime and full of eagerness, want to die when they should be wanting to live? We need to offer people the chance to talk AND ask critical questions that seek to better understand the proper causes of the issue. It is not enough to know that it is happening - we should aim to know why it is happening. 

Mental health issues, suicide, depression

- all this is so widespread, happening on so large a scale in both men and women that it can’t simply be a question of individual character. When someone doesn’t want to trouble others with their troubles, it is a question of character. When you have symptoms and waste forces of apathy, dejection, depression

- dysfunction - spread across a generation, the problem is not individual, and these are signs that something is wrong. 

So why are so many young people so demoralised? There will be many reasons. 

One, to quote Vaclav Havel, is because their moral environment is contaminated.

There is much that is good in our society and its culture, but, speaking broadly, there is also much in it that is toxic, false, conformative, destructive and inconducive to the proper development of young people and individuality. 

What does the very existence of a movement about widespread depression and mental health in the young say about a society? Does it suggest it is healthy beneath surface level? Is it expressive of a culture that meets and respects the needs of the individual, or does it express the opposite? It shouldn’t be there. 

If you disagree or are unhappy with the sense of collective direction - silence is senseless, voice your discontent, make it public. It is through silence, through people meeting none of their innermost thoughts outside of themselves, that they really do feel alienated and hopelessly alone. Our silence also makes us complicit: we need to talk about what doesn’t work and needs to be changed - we can’t all think only of ourselves and hope someone else deals with the essential problems. It is up to us to make a contribution. To only complain of a problem, to react by distracting oneself - this is not a contribution. With regards to issues like depression and mental health, we can all make positive contributions to our moral environment, we must just change the way we act - act by thinking more of others, not in fear or paranoia but consideration. We alone can help make the collective sphere we all share in a source from which to draw strength and solidarity. 

I for one voice my discontent. For all my love of my native city and society, I think many of its values are wrong and it has lost its grasp of what is important. I refuse to support or contribute to those aspects of a spiritually impoverished environment that makes young people feel oppressed and suffer unnecessarily. 

Movements and statistics like these make me feel our direction is not a good one. Let us not continue on in the wrong direction out of stubbornness or pride but admit when we are wrong and change while we can. It is senseless to walk into a storm. 

To those struggling with depression, I say such an illness is testament to a certain sensitivity, and life without sensitivity is worth very little. Whenever I feel weary or tired of life I soon hear, read or learn something that makes me feel in complete harmony and makes me think what a fool I was for forgetting how much more I still have to experience, how much more there still is to hear, read and learn, how many people and places to meet. Sadness is distracting - it prevents giving a task its due attention and prevents the full gain of its reward. It deprives the individual! 

Finally, I say you cannot deny the value of everything all at once - if all the world’s musicians were depressed and lacked faith in what they did, there’d be no music for any of us to enjoy. In short, depression deprives the individual and deprives the world, it is an evil that wastes and drains human life and prevents potential - let’s act against it.