COMMENT: Never judge someone’s mental health choices

MY late grandmother didn’t have a therapy culture. There were very few mental health conditions. People were just “a bit daft”. Her own brother – my late uncle – went “a bit daft”. He suffered terribly after the Second World War and spent time in institutions.

Whenever the subject came up, my grandmother’s diagnosis never changed.

“He was all right,” she’d say, “until he went a bit daft."

Her neighbour, George, was the same. He used to ask my grandmother to flash her knickers, which she often did, in front of a 10-year-old me. My prepubescent brain found their behaviour to be a little unnerving, but my grandmother had a reassuring explanation.

George was “a bit daft”.

She seemed to know lots of people of a similar disposition. They were also children of the Great Depression. War survivors. Poverty escapees. They were many things. But they were not daft. They were denied the mental health understanding that’s available today (mostly).

There’s less chance of being mis-categorised or maligned now. A 2022 article in the New York Times referenced the rise of Instagram Therapy with terms like self-care, trauma and triggered being thrown up with hashtags in the (positive) hope of raising awareness or the (cynical) expectation of more likes. On social media, mental health experts and wellness gurus battle for eyeballs, promising to find the “authentic self”.

Last month, a Yahoo Southeast Asia feature offered tips or how to choose the most suitable therapist or psychologist, as if selecting a hairdresser or plumber, in a bid to address the ailments and syndromes that are either being self-diagnosed or diagnosed by others promising improvement after a few (paid) sessions.

Right now, someone is preparing for an awareness event in an office near you, to appease modern, cultural demands and tick an ESG box for the HR department, before moving on to the next issue.

In May, the issue of anxiety was selected for Mental Health Awareness week in the UK, a serious disorder that affects many people. But who defines the anxiety? The individual? A therapist? Or an HR executive who needs to satisfy a wellness KPI?

Admirable to have mental health vocabulary

And what constitutes anxiety? For my grandmother, it was the threat of her childhood home being bombed by the Germans (it was. She was devastated). For my daughter, it was the threat of the Far East Plaza nail salon closing before she got there. (It did. She was devastated.)

No, we’re not going in that direction. This isn’t a shouty rant against the kids of today and their cosseted interpretations of mental health conditions. On the contrary, Zoomers and teenagers possess a mental health vocabulary that is both necessary and admirable. They speak of being triggered and mean it. They refer to boundaries and demand them. They discuss self-care and expect it. Life-changing concerns are no longer dismissed in the monosyllabic language of my late grandmother. It’s great.

But mental health awareness is not a mental health condition. Just as a headache isn’t necessarily a tumour, a sleepless night after a hard day at the office isn’t necessarily a serious disorder either. As psychiatrist Simon Wessely put it in a Guardian article, “We don’t need people to be more aware. We can’t deal with the ones who already are aware.”

While the intention to spread the word is honourable, there’s a risk of drowning out those who really need to be heard. Are we cherry-picking the milder issues and ignoring the serious stuff?

An enlightened workplace increasingly wants us to share our burdens over a latte and a beanbag chair, particularly if they are minor burdens, relatively speaking, such as work stress and performance anxiety, but who fancies getting stuck into schizophrenia over the water cooler?

In a crowded house of mental health concerns, there still feels a sense of discrimination. The more complex disorders remain taboo subjects, typically used to explain flawed character behaviour in a Netflix thriller (I’ve been guilty of this in my crime novels, too, but I draw on autobiographical elements to highlight legitimate triggers and symptoms).

So the obvious conclusion should therefore be, stay out of the way if your ailments are superficial and perhaps even exaggerated. Take your Instagram therapy and unrealistic demands for self-care and leave the lines and services clear for those who really need them, the ones with the kinds of disorders still not openly discussed during office-sharing sessions. Step aside for those with real wellness concerns, rather than those that can be hash-tagged next to a photo of someone doing yoga on a beach, right?

Guidance needed, not condescension

Well, no, not really.

Last week, I interviewed psychiatrist Dr Jared Ng, ahead of World Suicide Prevention Day (10 September). We discussed hard numbers. They were all depressing. In Singapore, there was a spike in suicides in 2022, with 476 deaths reported, the highest total since 2000 (and 25.9 per cent higher than the 378 cases in 2021).

In May, a Yahoo Southeast Asia article reported that children and young adults have been significantly affected by symptoms of depression and anxiety. A study found that, on average, Singaporean children missed approximately 24 days of school in the past year due to those mental health issues, a deeply troubling statistic. The dots are not difficult to join.

Vulnerable people need guidance not condescension. So they participate in the therapy culture, with a buffet of mental health experts for any number of triggers, real or imagined? So what? For the odd narcissist confusing a missed hair appointment with an anxiety attack, they’ll be others in real pain, the kind that requires professional help. Are we going to dismiss them too? Babies and bathwater and all that.

The last thing fragile young people need is patronising old farts like me mocking their therapy choices by rambling on about those halcyon days of stiff upper lips, mental resilience and poorly-treated uncles spending too much time in institutions.

My uncle died a broken man, because today’s therapy culture wasn’t available to him. It is now. So why not explore different mental health options and professionals?

To do otherwise, according to my late grandmother, would be “a bit daft”.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 28 books.

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