When to ask for help.

I walked passed a man, yesterday.  He was sat on his own on a bench, a backpack by his side.  He was straight legged; his ankles crossed, like his arms.  As I walked by he said, “They’re all mental patients around here.  They’re all mental.”  I couldn’t tell if he was speaking to me or just speaking out loud as I happened to walk by.  Venom and frustration were clear in his voice.  I wasn’t in the mood to speak with him and enquire why he held these feelings, so I continued on walking.

It’s clear that the world you view through your personal choice of media is distorted by your choice of what you want to watch and listen to; and by and large what is reflected back is the worldview you most readily associate or agree with or aspire to.  So, having said that, it is no surprise to me that the articles dealing with the idea of mental health or wellbeing are growing – both in terms of number and in profile.

Over the past few days, as well as the encounter in the town, a few other things have struck me about this subject. 

·      It seems to me healthy that people are willing to speak publicly of their personal frailties and the strategies they have employed to help them through the issues they deal with. 

·      In a video from years ago now, Stephen Fry was on stage speaking about the difference between American and British humour – it’s on Youtube – and he mentions that the biggest section in American bookshops is reserved for self-help books. 

·      I was sat in the library earlier this week and a lady and I fell into conversation: she mentioned her fascination with the accurate use of words and used the example, “people say they’re depressed when they don’t mean depressed, they mean dejected.”

These three things churned and swam inside what constitutes my brain, along with now this disparaging comment from the man on the bench.  The first thought being that “depressed” and “dejected” are synonyms; but I think I understood the subtle distinction the lady was trying to describe, and I began to apply this statement to myself.

I think I can see the difference between what I was feeling at the start of what I still think of in my Australian sports terminology – mental disintegration – as being dejection: sadness, a sense of loss, disconsolate.  The position I found myself in was one of my own construct; I was (am) responsible for my marriage stopping.  And I found myself employing doublethink about the situation I was in.  Like a good Party Member, I could perform this simultaneous act with such conviction I managed to fool myself, and a lot of those around me, that everything was ok.  Importantly, I did not listen to those few who could see that in actual fact everything was not ok.  One of those I chose not to listen to was someone I loved.

I still can’t work out if I didn’t listen because I thought I was strong enough to cope with the situation, that I would work through it, or because I did not think I was in a situation I needed help to get through.  I thought I was being honest all the way through this time but I can’t have had the proper capacity to convey what I was feeling, to understand what I was feeling or to face what I was feeling.  And then I fell apart.

I think I’m trying to say the notion of being able to discuss your physical and mental wellbeing more easily and with less fear of ridicule is good.  Being able to see and understand you have a problem that requires discussion is another thing entirely, and it is there that perhaps the new work lies: building the capacity in ourselves to see and understand we need help.  When that man said of the people of town, “they’re all mental”, he was right, ish.  What is needed are the structures and education that means we can recognise it and speak up… before we start needing to refer to ourselves with a piece of Australian sporting terminology.