How is your mental health?

How are you?

Really I want you to take a minute and really give it some thought. In today’s society we spend so much of our time running around doing things for everybody else that we forget to think about ourselves.

Now I want you to say exactly how you feel or even better still write it down as you are saying it.

In today’s society we have created such an unhealthy stigma around mental health. People are afraid to express among each other exactly how it is that they are feeling. They are afraid of being looked upon as some “nut-case” that should be locked up.

How did we come to develop such a view of mental health?

I believe the medical system along with the pharmaceutical industry has a lot to answer for when it comes to this.

I also believe we require a public inquiry into psychiatry. The so called experts in mental health, as well as the pharmaceutical companies and Doctors.

All these so called experts have deemed all mental health issues as a chemical imbalance in the brain. Yet there is no such test to determine whether or not this is true or not.

We just have to take their word for it.

It is a rather convenient hypothesis for all these though. A chemical imbalance can be treated with drugs and does not require what can often be time consuming and emotional treatment plans using psychotherapy.

So how do we become diagnosed as being mentally ill?

The process starts by going to see you GP. The average GP visits in 2013 lasted for about 12 minutes in the UK.

This is nowhere near long enough for a person to establish whether or not you have a mental health issue or not.

By the time you take out all the admin crap that a doctor goes through such as greetings, filling in paper work and writing your prescription and explaining this new drug there is very little time for you to express how you really feel.

Now don’t get me wrong you may be lucky and have a GP who is educated in mental health issues. They may understand what to do but in the majority of cases your GP does not know enough to comfortably deal with this situation. As a result you will be referred to see a psychiatrist.

Either way by the time you have been referred to the psychiatrist the GP will have already labelled you with a mental illness. By the time you do eventually get to see a psychiatrist they will already have a predetermined agenda of their own. This will be based on this diagnosis from the GP and their only concern will be “correcting” the problem with drugs which you have probably been taking since you saw the GP. There is no emphasis placed on trying to get to the real root of the problem. Or finding out what is happening emotionally for the person.

The expert in the white coat.

How has it come to be that we view doctors and psychiatrists as experts that know everything? Why are we afraid to question a word that passes their lips?

We seem to have forgotten that these are human the same as you or I.

They are just as inclined to have biases. Belief systems and a host of biased information spoon fed to them from pharmaceutical companies. All this information telling them how this drug is the best for treating mental health issues.

Well if these people really are the experts in this field. Why is it that mental health issue have remained stubbornly high for years? There is no sign of that being addressed any time soon either.

Drugs do have a place when it comes to resolving mental health. However they are not the full answer and they are certainly not a long term solution.

The medical system has taken the wrong approach when it comes to mental health issues.

Trying to correct chemical imbalances in the brain is not the way to go about the issue because that is not the problem. The problem is that these people have become overwhelmed with anxiety and fear and do not feel safe and supported within their community.

We need to change and be more open with people.

We can not afraid to speak out about how we really feel.

If someone does reach out for help we can not judge and ostracize them.

We need to set in place measures to make people with mental health issues feel that they are safe. That they can openly talk about how they feel.

Mental health only carries a stigma because we allow it to.

Until we change their will always be mental health issues.