Let’s talk about our feelings, not label normal emotions
Picture: iStock
In 2008, when Lucy Foulkes was aged 20, her life looked idyllic. She had a loving family, great friends, a lovely boyfriend. At university, she was studying psychology, which she adored, and had a great summer job as a swimming instructor. There was nothing external to prompt a catastrophic mental breakdown, and yet it happened.
“I was in Turkey when everything came undone,” she writes in Losing Our Minds: What Mental Illness Really Is And What It Isn’t. Walking back to their holiday apartment after a day on the beach with close friends, “I began to feel like I couldn’t breathe. My thoughts became dark and opaque.”
As a doctor injected her with Valium, he wondered why she was crying while on holiday. “That summer was the start of months, of years, of my experience of mental illness,” she says.
Returning to university, she describes how she became “a ghost in my own life: scared to be on my own; not sleeping; crying on campus and on trains.”
Diagnosed with anxiety and depression, she recovered, slowly, with the help of therapy and medication. Now an academic psychologist at University College London who researches mental health and social development in adolescence, Foulkes’ first book is a thoughtful, illuminating exploration of mental ill health, its gradual destigmatisation, and how the cultural shift around this destigmatisation has at times led to the medicalisation of everyday emotions and behaviours.
Importantly, it looks at how to tell the difference between conditions that need professional intervention, and the everyday difficult emotions.
In 2001, psychiatrist Derek Summerfield warned that “to conflate normality and pathology devalues the currency of true illness”.
We are, in other words, medicalising the everyday bad stuff. In the US, the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the famous DSM – states that you can be diagnosed with clinical depression two weeks after the death of a loved one. Writing in the BMJ, academics Chris Dowrick and Allen Frances describe this medicalisation of grief as “a medical intrusion into private emotions”.
Sociologist Frank Furedi calls this “the problemisation of emotional life”.
“The public understanding of mental illness is still limited,” writes Foulkes.
“In the rush to destigmatise mental illness, all kinds of normal negative emotions and experiences are being labelled as mental disorders – or at the very least, as problems that need to be instantly fixed.”
Welcome openness
As anyone who has ever suffered from either mental illness or everyday difficult emotions will know, recovery takes time. Sometimes we need urgent professional intervention, but mostly we don’t.
Meanwhile, we need to be aware of ‘looping effects’, or how mental health labels can become self-fulfilling prophecies, says psychologist Nicholas Haslam.
He argues that when mental health professionals classify and name something as a mental disorder, they are creating something new. “People then come to recognise themselves in that label, and the concept becomes solidified,” writes Foulkes.
That mental ill health is finally being spoken about with increasing openness is wonderful. (As a clinically depressed, self-harming, alcoholic teenager in Ireland in the mid-80s, I found the lack of understanding, the lack of basic vocabulary, even from senior mental health professionals, jaw dropping.)
Happily, we have moved on considerably since then, particularly since the 2007 Time To Change campaign, which highlighted how one in four of us at any given time is experiencing mental ill health. Public figures like Stephen Fry, Ruby Wax, and Princes Harry and William allied themselves with the campaign, In Ireland, musicians Niall Breslin and Sinead O’Connor have spoken openly of their experiences, as have rugby player Alan Quinlan and GAA’s Shane Carty. Around 1% of the Irish population - 45,000 people - suffer from bipolar disorder, another 1% from schizophrenia, and 10% - around 450,000 people - from depression.
Foulkes is keen to emphasise that it’s important to reach out if you are experiencing problems that are not strictly at clinical levels. “I’m interested in compassion, not controversy,” she says over the phone from her home in London. “All distress is distressing. Grief and heartbreak are intensely awful and difficult, and we need to be able to talk about it and take it seriously. We need to respect people’s distress, rather than adopt a pull-your-socks-up approach.
“However, there is no straightforward solution. We absolutely don’t want to go back to shaming people who are experiencing distress, especially men – this is not helpful. Nor is over parenting – better to allow young people to take risks and guide them through stress than trying to help them avoid it at all costs.
“We need to promote detailed understanding of what full-blown mental health conditions actually are – like OCD, for example, which is a devastating mental illness – which helps to reduce stigma. Equally, the problemisation of our emotional lives sends an unfair message to young people that we can eradicate these everyday problems. It creates the expectation that happiness is the default position and any deviation from this needs correcting. It adds an extra burden.”
Solace in diagnosis
Self-care, diet, exercise, sleep, talking to others, moderating your social media use, giving yourself a break, sharing how you feel all help us to deal with difficult feelings and situations. If this tips over into actual mental illness, it’s important to know when to get help, advise mental health experts.
“The Time To Change campaign has helped with an ongoing conversation around mental health,” says Stephen McBride, director of services at Aware.ie, the information and support service for those affected by depression and bipolar disorder.
“Sometimes people find solace in a diagnosis. It’s both an individual and a societal question around how we define mental health. Definitely awareness around mental health has increased and speaking about it has become more destigmatised – anecdotally, we are seeing more people finding the inner strength to reach out to us. But the job isn’t done yet.”
Helping each other is critical, rather than relying entirely on professionals – for a start, there is often a long waiting list as mental health services remain underfunded and oversubscribed. Despite the scare stories around social media, it’s not all pro anorexic sites encouraging teenagers to self-harm or whatever.
“There’s a lot of positive content about mental illness on the internet,” writes Foulkes. Support, identification with others, a sense of community and not being alone. A 2018 review paper showed how the four pillars of real-life adolescent friendship – validation, self-disclosure, instrumental support, and companionship – were equally present in online friendships.
Obviously, the downside of social media is that it can weaponise our innate desire for social approval by quantifying it (‘likes’) – plus it’s public and permanent. But our fear and distrust of social media could well be down to the fact that it’s still relatively new - we are all still getting the hang of it.
Meanwhile, we need to look after each other and listen to each other, rather than label each other. Perhaps, instead of the unrealistic expectations of toxic positivity and the quest for perpetual happiness, we could instead operate from the Buddhist baseline: life is suffering.
Check it out
Aware’s depression checklist - if you have these symptoms for more than two weeks, seek professional help.
F — feelings of sadness, despair, guilt, anxiety
E — energy levels lower than usual, tiredness
S — sleeping too much or not sleeping properly
T — thinking slowed down, poor concentration
I — interest – loss of interest in things you normally enjoy
V — valuing yourself – low self-esteem
A — aches and pains with no physical basis
L — loss of interest in life
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
Celebrating 25 years of health and wellbeing
