One in three women born in Finland in 1997 had received disability benefits or rehabilitative psychotherapy for a mental health or neurodevelopmental condition by the age of 28
1997 is the starting year of Gen-Z.
Mental health is important.
Yet this focus on it as if it is the only thing to work on is a losing strategy and one of the reasons that mental health issues are going to keep escalating. It isn't just self-diagnosis and overdiagnosis, because there are definitely more mentally unhealthy people. However, treating mental health as if it is a standalone condition ignores the preconditions that lead into it. For the most part, mental health problems aren't physical, meaning that we aren't born with them, they are created through our experience.
Our experience isn't just mental though, it is a combination of factors which I bind to those four pillars of physical, mental, emotional and social aspects of our lives. And since these other three pillars are also degrading, it makes sense that mental health is going to suffer too. However, treating mental health conditions with various therapies and pills without addressing the other three, is going to ultimately end in failure, because it will keep redeveloping because the environment is built for it to do so.
As an example, a lot of people I have talked to site "stress" as the cause of their mental and emotional issues, without realising that stress is a symptom of their condition. Not a mental condition per se, but their inability to cope with the conditions they face, often through a lack of their own condition. Stress is a symptom of inability and we will feel it when ever we are out of our depth, whether at work or playing a game. Stepping away from work tasks reduces the stress, but it doesn't build ability to cope, in the same way not training for a sport doesn't make us better at playing that sport.
Instead of looking at mental health as a standalone condition of a person, the person should be evaluated holistically, where there physical, emotional and social pillars are also investigated. Most likely, the mental health issues stem from an imbalance in one or more of the other pillars, which makes the mental issue a symptom, not a cause or reason for the impacts of the mental issue - often an excuse to justify behaviours. If one or more of the other pillars are also out of balance, then the "mental treatment" should focus on improving those areas to see if it improves mental health also.
Move daily.
But this isn't just move physically, though that is almost a non-negotiable for mental health also. But on top of that, we should move emotionally and socially, as well as mentally. We should challenge ourselves to improve across the four pillars, even if it is only in very small ways. Give a friend a short call to say hi, reflect on a recent moment that we could have handled better and what alternative we could now choose, do a short guided meditation, take a walk. Make self-improvement, habitual.
Too much of the "self love" (I hate that term) is actually avoidance through pleasure-seeking. If people truly loved who they were, they wouldn't be struggling across any of the four pillars of their health, because they would be taking care of them daily. And if you haven't realised, good health isn't a solo endeavour, nor is it a selfish choice, because it includes others and building the relationships that matter, which flow in both directions. A healthy person is generous, but not to the point of being selfless, because in order to help others, we need to have the capabilities, which requires personal growth.
Pain is suffering.
Pain with purpose, is empowering.
And I think that this is a big part of the reason why there are so many people with mental health issues and especially in the younger generations, because so many don't have true purpose. Even their interests are highly transitory and non-committal. This means that any discomfort becomes a condition to suffer, rather than an experience of growth. And then the response to the suffering is avoidance, which will lead to not only no growth in potential and capabilities, but likely more suffering also. And the spiral winds downward into depression, compulsion, and frustration.
To empower ourselves, we have to care enough about ourselves to do what we are willing to commit to and care for. We have to put purpose in our lives to the point that we are willing to suffer for it. Because when we choose to invest ourselves into what is meaningful, we don't suffer, we grow.
And there are so may people who are looking for a diagnosis, looking for someone to fix them, a pill to ease their suffering, when the actual cause is that they themselves are unwilling to be curious enough to do what it takes to cure themselves. Curious and cure come from the same core word - care and attention.
No one else can fix our mental health.
We have to do the work.
Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]
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