Caroline O'Donoghue: Five things to remember about everyone's mental health
There’s a cliche in the mental health community, and it is the phrase ‘we need to talk about mental health’.
Every few years some government body issues a statement on how we all need to talk more about how we’re feeling, and by that, they specifically mean that they want men over 50 to stutter and announce to their best mate Jerry over a pint that they’ve been ‘feeling a bit down, lately’.
At this, Jerry will place a large hand on his friend’s shoulder, and say ‘well, tell me about it’ and then afterwards, Jerry will admit that he feels a bit down sometimes too. There is never a step two in this plan. There’s never a world where Jerry says ‘well, Paddy, do you know there’s a drop-in centre where you can get counselling for free, as well as anti-anxiety medication, should you and your therapist decide that you perhaps need them?’
The problem with the phrase ‘we need to talk about mental health’ is that everyone hates it. The people who are advocating for changes to how mental illness is funded absolutely hate it, because it diverts attention away from the lack of public infrastructure and puts the onus on individuals to cure their own disease. The people who don’t care about mental illness hate it because they’re bored of being told to care about mental illness, and a few stickers in the men’s loo won’t change their mind. It means nothing. It helps no one.
And yet, we find ourselves in a moment where we perhaps do, yet again, ‘need to talk about mental health’. Except now, there is one key difference.
This time, it’s not about our own personal mental health. It’s everybody else’s.
Recently, I was freaking out because an extremely respected man in my industry had not returned my email. We were supposed to be working together on an event, and I had introduced myself to deafening email silence. I was re-reading my original email, which at the time seemed charmingly jokey, and now just felt idiotic. “He thinks I’m a moron,” I said to my best friend. “He thinks I’m a feckless, dumb, idiot and he will never respond.”
My friend replied: “You have to remember – everyone is insane this year.” I nodded balefully. “Yes,” I agreed. “I am crazy.” She shook her head. “Yes, you are crazy, but so is he. He is probably tearing his hair out in the kitchen right now thinking, ‘Why on earth can’t I reply to that poor girl, why do I agree to do these events, why am I alive?’ Everyone is crazy right now. Everyone.”
Simple as this idea is, it has been one of the most effective mantras I’ve heard this year. When we think about mental health, we inevitably centre ourselves and our immediate loved ones. Now, because we are all – literally, every single person on the planet – going through an extremely traumatic and unusual year, we have to expand our empathy.
We have to walk down a crowded street and remember that absolutely everyone on that street – man, woman, child – has had something terrible happen to them in the last eight months. Perhaps they have not seen their parents or children. Perhaps they have lost a parent or a child. How do we hold all of this in our heads at once? How do we remain cognizant of the fact that the barista who was short with us is not just having a bad day, but a bad year?
Our empathy has to be absolutely huge, as big as it was when we were children. Remember that? Remember when you would rush into your parents every time an Oxfam advert came on, pleading with your parents that for only £2 a month – just two pounds!– you could buy a family a meal.
Remember tugging your mother’s sleeve every time you saw a person living on the street, desperate to know what you could do to help? Inevitably, some adult would explain to you that they donated to enough charities already, and that it was impossible to care for everyone, to contribute to everything. It had all seemed so unsatisfactory and meagre then, but as we grew older, it just became the way things were done. Sometimes I wonder if maturing is simply a great numbing of our better instincts.
But perhaps we can get back: perhaps we can mean to volunteer and actually do it; perhaps we can ask strangers how they are and really mean it.
It’s not strangers we have to worry about, of course. It’s the people close to us, some of whom will pick imaginary fights with us, some of whom we will pick imaginary fights with. When you’re extremely anxious about catching a deadly illness, sometimes it’s easier to invent a perceived slight and then rake someone we love over the coals over it.
Unfortunately, the only answer to this is to cut our loved ones the largest measure of slack our fabric roll of slack can possibly manage. It will not be easy, and an icy comeback will always be easier than a ‘I see how you might feel that way’.
This is, as far as I can tell, as much a part of the mental health journey as any self-care measure a bath salts company will try to sell you. It’s exhausting, it’s demeaning, it’s frustrating, but hey, it’s all part of it. And at the end of the day, you can always vent your frustration as I have done: by getting very into video games, and absolutely eviscerating entire villages of pixelated innocents. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.
