Sound Bites

There are some days when I feel that everything that the anti-stigma campaign and Mind are doing is producing sound bites; small titbits of information that’s easily digestible, but without any really good substance. Even the 1 in 4 will suffer from mental illness in their lifetime, that they quote is not explained well and many people really don’t understand where it comes from or what it actually means and I am somewhat annoyed.

In the same way when people talk about therapy and getting well it all sounds really easy and empty of substance or specifics. It’s sad really that in many ways I feel this is the only way to reach people but I still crave a bit more content, something that requires a little bit more thought and consideration that the 5 seconds it takes to read a tweet or digest one sentence.

The fact remains that mental health should have more consideration than a tweet or a blog post or a sentence and yet people do not seem to be giving it.

To talk about workplace stress or how things are or consider how people feel it all seems to be expected that after 10 mins you should be all done and we can move on and be fine but still I am annoyed.

I am annoyed because for many years when I was asked about my problems that 10 min limit imposed by doctors and consultants alike sent me into a tail spin. I would not know where to start and invariably I would not talk because I just couldn’t work out what I needed to say that would fit into those 10 mins. I wouldn’t be able to work out what was the most important thing to say and often would just be quiet or give yes or no answers.

This is not good and it didn’t result in my mental health improving a great deal yet still the world seems to see these sound bites, these short sentences or conversations and have the expectation that this is good and it annoys me. A conversation about mental health will take more than this.

I shared a flat with a medical student and he said that if you are going, as a doctor, to bring cancer into the conversation then you should allow at least 30 mins to talk with the patient because of the emotional impact of the word.

So why is it that when people start getting into the complexities of mental health they still allow just 10 mins to do it?

You might think I am only complaining about the medical profession here but I am not. Good mental health is something that most of us work every day at whether we have a diagnosis or not without ever realising that we are doing it, but when so many of us are getting sick or feeling the stress maybe it’s about time we spent some more time considering how we feel, what would make things easier, or where to get support and not just from medical services.