Advocating For Mental Health In The Writing Community

"What or Who do you advocate for?"

That was a question a writer friend asked me a few weeks ago. It was a question, when I thought of it as a writing prompt, felt BIG. Too big for me to get my head around.

I’ve written little in the 'advocacy' or 'equality' realm . Mainly because I’m an ageing white guy with some privilege and can’t seem to figure out where I’d begin. I have some random jots and notes sitting in my draft folder, but that’s a different story. Or it could be, if I flush it out into some sort of worthwhile point.

But "What or Who do you advocate for?" made me stop and think about the word and idea of advocacy and about my own life.

Sure, I’ve done volunteer stints at a soup kitchen, delivered food and blankets to those in need, joined in on building a playground in my son’s hometown, made my donations to various food and toy drives during the holidays, but are one-off good samaritan deeds advocation for… anything?

I can say I advocate for my friends and family regularly, but is that good enough in the spirit of the word? Doesn’t advocacy invoke the ideals of doing something sustainable for the greater good?

Is advocacy as simple as offering support in the form of promoting or sharing another writer’s work?

I’ve been following a few writers and applauded what they've been doing.

Is that advocacy? Is that enough?

If I share Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, “Industrial Society And Its Future”, am I advocating for the man and his actions?

My point is this:

I’m just another schmuck who’s done some occasional good. A decent human, but just average. I wouldn’t call myself an advocate.

I took the question as a writing prompt, but also prompts a change within. Maybe part of my life ‘mission’ now in this stage should include more advocacy. I’m just another flea on the butt of a very large dog, but with enough fleas, we can wag the dog.

Best place to start is here in our community.

Writers are a rather unique group. We watch and listen — viewing and interpreting the world and humanity almost as if we’re outside of it. Many of us can relate to feeling “just a bit off” or like an outsider. “Strange, he was always so quiet... ”

Me, I’m a writer with an engineering background.

I might as well have “Socially Awkward Introvert” tattooed on my forehead.

Perhaps the solitude of living within our own heads as writers puts us at greater risk. Or maybe the cause and effect is just the reverse.

Joseph Jaynes Rositano talks specifically about the correlation between writers and mental health in his article,The Writing Life: Writing and Mental Health.

“Writers have to be careful observers of human nature and society. Painters and composers can take inspiration from suffering; but writers have to: drama comes from misery — comedy, perhaps even more so.” — Joseph Jaynes Rositano

Rositano references a study on this subject of writers (and the creative arts) and mental health; the largest study and 40 years in the making.

The study found that “except for bipolar disorder, individuals with overall creative professions were not more likely to suffer from investigated psychiatric disorders that the controls.”

However…

“Being an author was specifically associated with increased likelihood of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and suicide.” — ‘Mental illness, suicide and creativity: 40-year prospective total population study’ — pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

On a lighter note,

Rositano also mentions Socrates and his argument in Phaedrus that poetry is a form of divine madness.

Perhaps that could explain my sudden love of limericks. It also gives me a segue to one of my favourite jokes of all-time, while I hoist my coffee mug.

In the famous last words of Socrates, “I drank what?”

Like in many things I’ve written, I don’t have a conclusion or the answers or even a clear picture of what ‘Advocating For Mental Health Here In Our Writing Community’ entails.

It’s an ongoing journey.

Such is life.

But I will keep it forefront of my mind — in my writing and here in our community.

It all sounds almost ‘relational’, doesn’t it?

Stay well.

For his 21st birthday, my son created a fund-raising page on Facebook. By requesting donations rather than gifts, he shared a small insight into some of his own battles with mental health and advocated for a not-for-profit organisation that has helped him. I’m proud of him for that.

www.blackdoginstitute.org.au

Like any old dog, I too can learn from the next generations.