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Despite continually attempting to debunk the myths on mental health and wellbeing, there remains a stigma attached to the topic.
No matter how often the conversation of mental health creeps out from behind the shadows in an attempt to be understood, falsehoods, myths and a perpetuating stigma have a hold over how we perceive the idea of mental health. Notions such as you don’t have to worry about your mental wellbeing if you don’t have a problem, or those with mental health conditions are violent, have no will power, are lonely or weak, cannot work and are in the minority, are all damaging. As long as false assumptions such as these are believed, the stigma will remain.
Questioning some of these myths is Caroline Martin, a chartered psychologist with more than 25 years of experience working with individuals and groups.
1) Myth - People with mental health problems are weak
If you’re strong, you don’t need to worry about your mental health. Or at least, this is what some people believe as a result of unbalanced discussions on mental wellbeing. A mental health condition has nothing to do with being strong or weak or anywhere in between.
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“I have yet to encounter someone in my work who is experiencing mental health difficulties, who I would describe as weak,” says Martin. “On the contrary, they have typically survived incredible trauma, hurt and isolation. We have perhaps a disconnected sense of what it means to be strong, assuming that those who reach the top of a mountain, whether literally or professionally, are strong.”
Martin reiterates the thought that not everyone is starting from the same place. “People will experience events differently by virtue of their different life experiences,” she says. “This can be related to their gender, their age, and social context and the interplay of all three. We know that the amount of adversity we are asked to tolerate impacts on our ability to thrive over the course of our lives. This adversity can be within the home, within the community or within our environment. For some of us, getting through life’s challenges reflects our strength.”
The world has taken a significant beating when it comes to our mental health in the last few years. We are opening up more, sharing our stories and exploring the available supports together. As a result, Martin reminds us that “this is an opportunity for us as a society to reshape, with new awareness and humility, our mental health services. We can no longer hide behind a medical model that reduces our human experiences and responses to a diagnosis which implies weakness. Charities such as Slí Eile and the new Kyrie Farm are symbolic of the new framing of mental health services in our country. These services have a strong emphasis on co-creation and co-implementation that recognises the strength and offering of those of us who have experienced mental health struggles. Such enterprises will undoubtedly play a role in debunking this myth.”
2) Myth - Poor mental health is impossible to prevent
There is a belief that we are either pre-conditioned or, due to economic or social circumstances, likely to suffer poor mental health, that there is no way around it and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. Martin tells us that, “We know certain populations are more likely to have a diagnosis of mental illness, however, this is likely reflective of life experience and access to specific services rather than some underlying genetic flaw.”
“When we consider mental health, we invariably think of the individual and whether or not they are ‘mentally ill’,” says Martin. “This reflects the medical model that has dominated mainstream discourse on mental health since the 1950s. Locating the source of illness within an individual can be misleading at best and an abdication of societal responsibility at the other end of the spectrum. If we look at mental health or psychological health through a biopsychosocial lens, we may discover that we as a society have a great deal of influence over the wellbeing of our families, neighbours, colleagues and communities. It is important for us to recognise not only our role in creating an equitable society but to also believe in our ability to craft it. If we neither believe in our ability nor believe we have any role, then we will continue to have a narrow understanding of mental health and find ourselves privileging treatment over prevention.”
We can connect adverse childhood experiences and poor outcomes later in life, including poor mental health, however, as Martin indicates, “When we place greater emphasis on preventing adverse childhood experiences, we can reduce the prevalence of psychological distress. We know that children are adversely impacted by community adversity such as access to substandard schools, violence, historical trauma, poor housing. There is an emerging awareness of the impact of environmental adversity with certain populations more vulnerable to changes in our climate.”
That being said, the concept of one good adult plays a significant role in all of our lives, which brings us on to the next myth.
3) Myth - I can’t do anything to help someone with a mental health problem
The myth that mental health problems are a life sentence and there is nothing we can do to help friends or family is a crippling falsehood. Mental health lies on a varying spectrum and those with conditions will improve alongside that continuum. To say we cannot do anything to help someone with a mental health problem is a harmful and often detrimental myth.
“National and international research consistently points to the significance of one good adult in the life of young people,” says Martin. “While this may be a parent, the reality is that this role is often played by different people at different points in our lives. We often hear stories of the powerful positive impact of a teacher or a coach during childhood or adolescence. There can be a belief that schools can assign this role to certain people, trying to make this concept fit within the structures of the system. However, in reality, it is the child who determines who their one good adult is.”
Martin specifies that recent research indicates that the relationship we have with our teacher’s during adolescence is one of the biggest predictors of positive mental health in our adult years and as adults this does not stop either.
“We talk about the concept of having a person in work that we can lean on and confide in when things are tough,” says Martin. “Being present for a colleague when they are going through difficult times can be in and of itself very healing for us. We know this from our understanding of group dynamics. It is therefore important that we don’t dismiss our own contributions to the welfare of others, as this diminishes our own sense of efficacy, our own sense of our ability to be supportive to others in our lives. My colleague in the UK, Dr Karen Treisman, sums this up beautifully, when she says, you don’t need to be a therapist to be therapeutic.”
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