Mental Health Homeostasis is not for sale
Right now, everyone is talking about mental health. This is fantastic as it is increasing awareness, reducing stigmas and making it culturally acceptable to look after your mental health, something long overdue. LinkedIn and Instagram are full of people talking about anxiety, depression and mental illness. However, I worry that in the trending, fashionable world of the mental illness discussion, the goal and the authenticity has been lost and it has become less about helping those with mental illness get access to help and more about self and brand promotion. Are the deep sufferings felt by those with mental illness being diluted by the superficial, fake world of influencers and social media? Have we lost our way and forgotten our aim to help sufferers? Is awareness not about ensuring families, communities, employers and governments maintain access to mental health treatment for all?
When it comes down to it, we humans haven’t changed much since we were cavemen. The purpose and programming of the human race is still to survive and produce fertile offspring. Staying healthy helps us survive. Physical and mental health is the absence of illness and the maintenance of a process called homeostasis which is defined as keeping a constant internal environment that can adaptively feedback and respond to changes in your external environment. We maintain our physical and mental health with exercise, sleep, good nutrition, human interaction, mental stimulation, rest, washing, hydration and pleasure; all of these help us stay alive and attract a suitable mate. Mental illness disrupts homeostasis, either with poor nutrition, overstimulation, poor sleep, isolation, a lack of rest or due to a genetic illness. Recovery is about providing people with the medicines (nutritious food is medicine too) and strategies for sleep, distress tolerance and relaxation etc, to help restore them to health. Our caveman brains were not ready for the changes to social structures and over-stimulation that technology has provided which is what has contributed to the huge surge in cases of poor mental health in the last twenty years. We must strive to provide people with the tools to self-adapt their brains to modern-day. The purpose of mental illness awareness is to give people the vocabulary to be able to describe their symptoms, so they can actively and autonomously take action towards treating them and also ensuring governments maintain and improve the available treatments to help people get and stay mentally well.
Social media is currently awash with individuals talking about their mental health, giving hope for recovery, breaking down the barriers that rob people of hope, believing their illness a fixed part of their personality, something incurable and replacing it with practical steps towards improvement. Where things lose me, is when it becomes a vanity metric, a way of receiving social attention or of selling a non-research-backed cure. It sometimes feels like the whole of Instagram has Manchausens Syndrome, faking disease for shallow attention, and it is hard to tell the authentic genuine sufferers from those wanting media validation and social approval. As someone who has overcome a very severe eating disorder caused by deep feelings from severe anxiety, which nearly killed me, and that robbed me of so much, including many friends who took or lost their lives as a result of the disease, I find it oddly insulting. I am not that person anymore. I have overcome, but feel it diminishes the suffering of genuine cases. Mental illness is not fun, it is not positive and the ultimate aim should be the restoration of health as it takes from your life. It robs you of so much. Recovery has not been easy. It has been a constant fight and there is no magic fix for recovery, it is more a stable remission and something I manage, with a fully functional and amazing life. Trying to keep the anxiety at bay can feel quite draining sometimes. It can hide my positive self. There are certain coping mechanisms I use, like sleep and walks and eat well and watch sugar and caffeine and not drink alcohol, that if I don’t do I can get unwell. This can sometimes feel quite boring and restrictive and provoke unfair judgements and the journey I have been on, though highly insightful and the making of me (I say through my struggles I found my strengths and anyone who knows me knows I have a very strong personality), is something I would not wish for anyone. No one deserves to get unwell. Mental illness is not a choice, but recovery can be. Mental illness is not cool, it is hard and the ultimate aim should be motivating people towards a sustainable remission from symptoms like I work each day to sustain.
I always feel that if someone like me can recover, so can anyone and I spend my life motivating others towards happiness and health. I am open with my story because I hope somehow it helps others. However, I am not proud of my illness and am not making over-simplified promises about it being easy. Recovery is a long and ongoing journey, with ups and downs and lapses and relapses, and it is not simple and you cannot do it without help. What works for one person may not for another. I still find it hard to accept I ever got eating disorders, as it is so far from the happy and healthy “sporty and happy, grounded, academic, foodie, creative outdoorsy type” way I see myself, and so for a while, it triggered a bit of an identity crisis as I lost myself and saw it as a flaw or failure, but I know now that it was an illness like any other and was not my fault. I didn’t choose it, and I was lucky to have received good care for recovery which has brought me back to my old, enthusiastic, balanced and healthy, foodie-self. Anyone can get mentally ill and maintenance of mental health is not a status symbol, it is a normal part of life. Getting mentally ill is not a failure, just like physical illness is not, it is a sign you need to proactively take steps towards treatment to homeostatically get back to health. You never choose to get ill, but you can choose to recover. This is why we need to be educating, empowering and encouraging the positive steps towards health.
Another thing is that now that we have the vocabulary for an illness, people can sell you a cure and your mental health is not for sale. Every single person deserves good mental health. Mental health is 100% worth investing in, but sometimes the simplest thing like a walk can be as useful as two hours of expensive treatments and there are some claims made by companies which are downright wrong. Like all medicine for physical illnesses, there are some mental illness treatments that have medical evidence behind them, and those that do not. What is important is that people respect science, and look at the evidence behind claims before accepting them. So many businesses now seem to contain mental health claims. If you are unwell, it is important you do your scientific research before jumping in and find what has the most evidence behind it and works well for you personally. Each persons’ cure is unique and what might be a panacea to one person will be poison to another. You must open-mindedly self-experiment and find what works for you and adapt it to your changing life. When I was younger I used running to control anxiety, now I do yoga and I tried mindfulness, CBT and psychotherapy and have adapted lots of different tools to find what works now for me. Nutrition is something else that is both physical and mental health medicine and food plays a huge role in mood. Everyone should have access to good nutrition, this is something I ardently advocate. The overlap in this was hugely evident in my own eating disorders with my mental health being hugely improved now by my acquired nutrition education and sustained excellent nutrition. Food impacts how you feel, concentrate, learn and behave and good food can give you vitality which can further help improve your mood. It is important you accept that mental illness cannot always be cured by one thing, however, a multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary and ever-evolving approach with the right evidence-based care, that can help recovery. There is no one magic pill for recovery, medication helps some people (I have never tried), but not all and doctors don’t have all the answers. They can help, but they can’t know everything and so don’t expect instant fixes. Don’t buy a cure, trust the evidence and try again if something fails. Most importantly, don’t give up.
Right now, everyone is talking about mental health. I hope that post-COVID-19, this conversation will continue. Mental health is not for sale as everyone, regardless of financial background, deserves access to good treatment. That is what mental health awareness is about. That is the goal. It is not about individuals but society and raising awareness to ensure that every single person has access to mental homeostasis restoring treatments and care should they get ill and need it. It is about making sure governments do not cut funding to essential programmes and making sure that politicians never forget the value and importance of basic mental health improving services like good nutritious school meals, shared green spaces, available free anxiety and depression combating exercise and social groups and so much more. It is our societal responsibility to direct awareness towards the maintenance of a good external environment so that everyone can have a good physical and mental internal environment. Mental health awareness is societal health homeostasis.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
COPYRIGHT LAURA CAMPBELL 17/02/2021
