Can We Start Taking Mental Health at Least Somewhat Seriously?

Wikipedia has a list of notable people who’ve committed suicide since 2000. It’s quite long. If you sort each subsection by the most recent year, you get pretty much the same opening word in the top entry: “American…”

American comedian who died of suicide after ______. American football player who died of a self-inflicted ______. American dancer and singer who committed suicide after ______. American voice actor who suffered ______ . It goes on and on. We’re all aware of it. We know it well. We have for years. Many of us, regrettably, have personal experience with the matter.

In today’s increasingly divisive and tribalistic world, an agreement is rare. The idea that the United States has a serious mental health problem appears to be one of those rare subjects. That would make sense, given that about 40% of us are suffering from poor mental health ourselves.

And those are self-reported numbers. The real ones would, naturally, be much higher. People carry their mental health issues around with them like a dead fish in a very well-made and well-sealed backpack. No one else can tell it’s there, yet. It remains undiscovered if everyone just gives it a passing glance. But if anyone bothered to really look in there, it would be quite obvious, fairly quickly.

In most of our already-disadvantaged communities, the numbers are even worse. Among LGBTQ+ youth, the number suffering from depression cycles from about “half” on the lower end to as much as two-thirds. How is any of this not garnering a stronger reaction? Are we that apathetic toward each other at this stage in society? Or is it just too difficult?

The answer to those questions is nearly irrelevant. We just have to do something.

Sweeping

My sub-headers generally have two meanings despite being one word. In this case, I’m referring to the sweeping nature of our mental health problems as well as our knee-jerk reaction of sweeping them under the rug.

Mental health issues reduce life expectancy. No qualifiers there, they just do. To varying degrees based on the ailment and severity, of course, all have some impact on our physical well-being and longevity. They steal our most valuable resource — time — and worse yet, take away the appreciation for the time we already have. Few other ailments do both those things at once, making mental health issues some of the more damaging health issues that one can have, in my opinion.

And at least 40% of us have them, to some extent. That’s horrible. Can you imagine if 40% of the country had, say, hepatitis? There would be hepatologist offices everywhere. Entire course curriculums would be changed to redirect focus on hepatology. The Philadelphia Phillies would change their mascot to a huge liver. Well, maybe not. But you get my point.

40% of Americans suffer from mental health issues, yet the coverage, awareness, and accessibility of treatment options is…almost nothing. Forget about the industry-specific issues like women getting overdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder or men not being taken as seriously with their claims of depression or anxiety. I’m talking about just getting people to seek help in the first place.

It’s a two-pronged approach in the early stages, and only later can we start to focus on the mental health communities’ shortfalls. The first two steps are theoretically simple ones, albeit fairly major undertakings. One is to reduce the stigma around mental health in general. It is OK to have issues. Most people will, at some point or another. Seeking help is the important thing.

The second (and simultaneous) step is to improve the accessibility of treatment. If we get people more open about their issues and more receptive to the idea of getting help for them, we need to make sure that help is actually, well, there. I called a few providers in my area recently — 60% didn’t take my insurance, and none would schedule an initial consultation within 30 days from my original call. Some help.

I can state from personal experience that, in more moderate or severe cases of depression, everything feels like you’re trying to swim through mud with a cinderblock around one ankle. You expend 95% of your energy on pretending to be normal and meeting the basic responsibilities of your life. The remaining 5% isn’t enough to accomplish much.

The amount of effort it takes just to admit the problem and start making calls is almost insurmountable. The last thing we need at that stage is a bunch of unnecessary resistance from the “providers.” The patient will just give up out of exhaustion. Maybe they’re around in six months to try again. Maybe they’re not.

If we had more people seeking the help they needed, maybe the natural demand for more (and better) practitioners would fill the gap. Or maybe we’d just continue overworking the already-exhausted ones we have.

Fear

The stigma surrounding mental health needs to be dispelled; the fear needs to abate. Some will say that it’s nowhere near as bad as it was even 20 years ago, which is true. But we still have a long way to go.

There’s no better evidence of the difference between our attitudes on mental and physical health than by looking at the traditional responses to inquiries about either. For example, say I’m in my office with a consistent, wet, hacking cough. Someone might say:

“Hey, Pete, you really should get that cough checked out. You know you do smoke like 47,000 cigarettes a day.”

And I’d say, “thanks, you have a point there,” and then decide internally whether I gave a s*** or not. No harm, no foul.

But if I’m sitting in my office and someone (who has heard me say that I hate my life at least twice daily for the last 14 work days) says:

“Maybe you should really consider seeing someone.”

I’d reply: “What!? Me, a problem? No, you have a problem! Go take you and your problem out of my office.”

Well, not really, but many people would. The perception is that it’s personally fine for someone to express concern about your physical health, but if that same person expresses concerns on your mental health they must be implying that you have some sort of defect or weakness.

Those of us who have survived or are surviving mental illness have a role to play in all of this — getting rid of our own fear of discussing it. This is one of the (very) few areas in my life where I’ve done well on the personal development front. See, I had depression that started creeping in during high school that continued throughout most of my 20s. It would range somewhere between a 4/10 and a 7/10 in my teens, and more in the 6-to-8 range in adulthood.

During this time period, all sorts of events that most would describe as “good” occurred. I was the prom king. I entered some great relationships, made new friends. I was promoted seven or eight times. Since none of them resulted in anything approaching happiness, my nihilism grew worse. I smoked more. My drinking worsened. I needed help. Not once did anyone suggest it, nor did it occur to me to get some myself.

I’m very open about all of this, now. After getting some help for the many issues I had going on. My family knows all of this. My employees do, too. You’d be amazed how that openness quickly turns into a consul-type role — I find I’m the only person many of my employees know whose struggles with these items are common knowledge. As a result, when they find themselves facing similar difficulties, I’m the first stop. It is a role I take very seriously.

It’s also one I would not have were I not open about my own past, stigma be damned. I’d hate to think that many of these same individuals who’ve come to me in the ensuing years might have kept those struggles bottled up if not for the fact that their boss or colleague was transparent about his own problems. I sure didn’t have anyone I felt comfortable having those conversations with while I was struggling.

I’m sure not everyone has that type of space or relationship to lean on. Those who are fairly isolated socially are more likely to have mental health problems as it is, and the only way to make those people feel safe to come forward and seek help is by reducing overall societal stigma. And that’s something we need to work on correcting as soon as possible.

Forward

If the 50% or so of us who’ve had mental health issues at some point in our past were open about them, the stigma would be gone tomorrow. I know that’s too big an ask — some people prefer to just keep their private life private. Lacking that, maybe we need some mechanisms in place to amplify the voices that are comfortable talking about it so that we can start to change the culture.

And I mean normal people, by the way. Celebrities and the like sharing their problems takes no small amount of courage, but it’s easier to dismiss. They have plenty of money — of course, their problems can be solved. It’s deeper than that, naturally, but many will dismiss them all the same.

Seeing everyday folks, people you know personally, or respect on an intimate level is a different game entirely. Those are the voices we need more of. And you know, we could really use a topic to unite around right now anyway. Let’s make it mental health. No politics, no ideologies, just human decency.

Maybe if there was a little more decency we wouldn’t have as many mental health problems, to begin with. Only time will tell. We’ve made plenty of progress on this topic over the years, but we are still woefully short of where we need to be. Let’s start to change that.