The Mental Culture

The definition of culture is: ‘the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.’

Now when we think of culture, we think of music, dancing, food, festivals, and farming.

And yes that is culture, but I want to focus on what I feel has become culture.

And that is the depression and anxiety, and paranoia of the people, which I believe is caused by our “modern cultures.”

Approximately one in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year. In England, one in six people report experiencing a common mental health problem (such as anxiety and depression) in any given week.

There are an estimated 64 million people in the UK.

So that means that 16 million people in the UK that will experience mental health problems each year.

And around ten million people experience anxiety and depression directly. That’s a LOT of people.

One in ten children experience depression and anxiety...children? There are an estimated 11 million children (under 18) in the UK, with that number growing still. Children make up one-sixth of the UK’s population. There are over one million children in the UK experiencing depression and anxiety.

And with these numbers increasing, depression and anxiety seem to me, becoming a culture. Something that is just there. Something that is now passed down from parent to child, much like passing down music tastes and dancing traditions, food recipes, and farming lands and techniques.

And these numbers are based on depression and anxiety alone. There are hundreds of other mental health problems that affect the people of the UK.

We are living in a world where mental health is a part of our culture. It is cultivated by us, by the way we run our world.

The fact that children experience mental health is a statement.

The statement is that this world is becoming too difficult even for its children.

Our schooling system is flawed, our financial situation is dire, and our care system is falling apart more every day.

Children are expected to succeed before they even learn the first letter of the alphabet.

Children are being forced to take GCSE’s at 14 years of age, and if they fail, then they are denied a future. That is a lot of stress for a child.

And on top of that, children are subject to bullying. Bullying is a serious problem in schools. But by giving it the word bullying, it’s been out on the back burner, the word bullying doesn’t sound serious enough to me.

So let’s try this: children are harassed, assaulted, and isolated on a day-to-day basis

Children spend 190 days of their lives a year at school. That’s 190 days where they’re assaulted, harassed, and isolated by other children.

So it’s no wonder the number of children with mental health problems is getting higher and higher.

And that’s where the problems start.

After all those years of flawed schooling and abuse, our young people then have to try and get into colleges and universities where, if they were failed during school, they won’t be accepted. And that’s their future taken away already.

But should they be accepted? They then go through more years of flawed education where they’re subjected to stress.

Now here’s the real kick. Here I’ll give you an example which is my own experience. I got through school with difficulty, but I managed to get into college to study animal science, I passed the level two with a distinction* and in my level three, near the end of the year, my tutor lost nine of my assignments. It took me a week to complete one assignment, that was nine weeks of my work lost. And I had to re-do it. I had four weeks to re-do nine weeks of work, I had to drastically reduce the quality of my work just to keep a pass. Flawed.

Leaving college just scraping a pass on my level three, I applied to the only animal-related job that isn’t a veterinarian, which was at a sea life centre.

I applied and got into an interview section where I had to do a group interview, but this group interview was general, this company also owns a theme park and a few cafes also in the area. And this interview was for all of the areas of the company, not just sea life. And so I was overlooked.

The company didn’t acknowledge that I had qualifications in animal science. They proceeded to hire a sixteen-year-old school dropout to do the job I was qualified to do. Why? Because it was cheaper to employ a minor. This sixteen-year-old was looking after animals with no knowledge and no interest.

And this, this is where the next problems for our people come from. The employment system is just as flawed as the schooling system. Qualified adults are constantly ignored for younger unqualified people because it’s cheaper to employ them.

This happens all over the country, and it’s hard for people to get jobs, it’s hard for people to make a living. So as I say, it truly is no wonder so many of our population is suffering from mental health problems.

We are people with depression, anxiety, and so many other mental health problems, a lot of it caused by the way we run this country, by the way we run this world, and that’s our culture.

Depression, anxiety, our culture.