Belief in recovery can help to change attitudes
WE IRISH have always perceived our inner lives with a mixture of fascination and grave suspicion.
We recognise that the greatest stories and music we have produced come from the depths of our emotional struggles. Yet we have also been warned repeatedly that these same depths hold dangerous impulses and irrational tendencies. If something unfamiliar stirs within us – some jolt of anxiety or depression – we often view it as proof that there is something wrong with us.
Haunted by a dread of mental suffering for successive generations, we have lived in fear of our own shadow, ashamed of our insecurities. We have hidden our inner lives from one another, terrified that they would betray us and show us to be out of step in any way with “normality”.
When people who were near and dear to us required “treatment”, we were warned to say nothing. “Not a word” was a common phrase that echoed through our homes.
Blinded by fear, we fail to see a person who experiences any kind of mental ill health as a person.
We persuade ourselves that they are different to us, that they do not have dreams like the rest of us for their lives, and that if they did, such dreams were beyond their reach because some form of “madness” had permanently disabled them.
At least we now admit that this stigma is a reality. And we have begun to acknowledge how inhumanely we discriminate against anyone who struggles with mental ill health. The legacy of such stigma is a persistent terror in each of us that we might “lose our minds” or be viewed as “abnormal” in any way. This inward shame has silenced many people at critical times when they needed to reach out for support.
A recent report from the Health Research Board cuts right to the heart of our fear of mental distress. Titled Reconnecting with Life: Personal Experiences of Recovering from Mental Health Problems in Ireland, it proposes that what has kept the stigma alive has been our collective failure to appreciate that we can recover from mental ill health.
What the authors learned from the contributors to this study was that their main concern was “striving to reconnect with life”. The experience of a mental health crisis for each of them had been the loss of a sense of self. Recovery was successful to the degree that they managed to recover their connection to life in three domains:
Self: finding a way to accept themselves again as people who were capable of positive change.
Others: experiencing, accepting and validating interactions with others.
Time: coming to terms with their past, learning to ground themselves in the present and being able to glimpse the possibility of a meaningful future.
This report reads like a very practical self-help manual, outlining the steps to recovery and drawing on the experiences of those interviewed.
It spells out the importance of mental health professionals holding onto a belief in the recovery of each person under their care, especially when such hope is absent in that person.
Our national policy on mental health, A Vision for Change, is underpinned by a strong recovery philosophy. And yet it does not spell out what this means in practice.
This report from the HRB is, in my view, the most important report to have been published since Vision, because it brings clarity to an issue that has been poorly understood. Without a shared understanding and belief in recovery, our services will remain stagnant, regardless of how many new resources are provided.
An appreciation of the potential for recovery will change how we see those who experience a mental health crisis. It will also help to eliminate fear of such experiences in our own lives and equip us with the confidence to confront them when they happen.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – The National Centre for Youth Mental Health, www.headstrong.ie