Mental Illness a social disease.

 

I always wonder, is mental illness a social disease? That is, the lot of our society? 

Today’s paper is a sobering read - “Spike in calls to SOS last year as more in distress amid pandemic.” 

Suicide calls are up. From 33,387 in 2019 to 39,492 in 2020. Calls enquiring about mental health are up too - from 2,143 in 2019 to 2,719 in 2020. The average number of calls peaked from July 2020 to February 2021 at 243.2 as compared to 79.9 in August 2019 to January 2020. 

The trend is clear - “more needed help during pandemic.”

The papers also wrote about the mental dilemma of a working mother of two, Jenny (not her real name). With a toddler and an infant to care for, Jenny was struggling to cope. “Each time Jenny, who is in her 30s, coaxed one child to sleep, the other would cry again. While she was at her wits’ end, her husband, a healthcare worker, was at work completing an overnight shift.”

At one point, Jenny called her husband and said: “You better quit your job now or I’m going to divorce you.” She even thought to herself this: “If I jump, maybe my kids would be happier. Maybe I could finally rest.”

The good news is that Jenny had sought help with a psychiatrist and was diagnosed as suffering from post-partum depression. With medication, she is currently on the mend, recovering with help from a loving community, caring and watching over her.

 

This is what Jenny said: “Don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s okay to prioritise yourself, because when you do that, it trickles down.”

I find it curious that she describes it as “it’s okay to prioritise yourself, because...it trickles down.” I wonder, what image are we expected to project in society when it comes to marriage, motherhood/fatherhood, the workplace, or when we age and grow old, becoming more dependent on others? 

Does self-prioritising take a backseat against the grain of these expectations clamouring for our time and attention?

The reality is. some people will never need much help from others because of a padded life, good genes and fortune, or a community that is always there. But, they are few and far between. 

As the pandemic has shown, the society like ours is set up in a way that some expectations can gradually isolate and strangle a soul of hope, meaning and purpose. Here is a list of them for identification. 

The expectation that we must prove ourselves at all costs. The expectation that we are only loved if we produce bankable results, whether in schools, at work, in a marriage and/or parenthood. The expectation that if they can do it, so can we, regardless of whether we are gifted different. The expectation that to be strong is to dismiss (or conceal) weaknesses, or ignore our body’s and mind’s cry for help. And the expectation that past failures will never be forgotten, and never to be repeated. 

Alas, the attention we give to them and the false bravado we put up with them often corner a soul into a life of pretentiousness and self-devaluation. Or, as Jenny so admonished, “Don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s okay to prioritise yourself.”

The observation of the chief executive of SOS, Gasper Tan, is rather apt here: “The feelings of loss and confusion, coupled with the prolonged stresses from navigating the uncertain employment market, can overwhelm individuals with intense feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.”

The paper also recounted another story of an undergrad, Andrew (not his real name). One morning, he woke up and was overwhelmed with this urge to kill himself. His parents drove to his dormitory immediately and “took him to see a therapist.” 

Andrew said: “Every second of life was tortuous. I could not eat or sleep, and there were days I was so weak I could not walk.” 

Now, Andrew has taken effective control of his life and he has this advice to all: “The important thing to know is you’re not alone. It’s just whether you have the courage to seek help, and to continue seeking help.”

I guess mental illness is a real struggle from within. It is an invisible struggle. From the outside, you are fine. But from the inside, you are fast losing the fight. 

Imagine a fight ongoing and you are helpless to put an end to it. Everyday, you experienced internal shouting and screaming, voices that are meant to torment you, and no one else. 

And unless you share with your loved ones, they will never know, or are deprived of the opportunity to care and cry with you. Those are voiceless screams from within that you can’t seem to escape from, unless you take that plunge to end it all. What only you can viscerally sense as a devouring reality is somehow designed to relentlessly drive you off the edge. 

As novelist Stevie Smith puts it: “I was much too far out all my life, and not waving but drowning.” 

Let me just say that I believe a major part of the problem is that mental illness is a social disease, that is, it is the price we pay for the material successes we pursue quite relentlessly, and that subtly changes society.

 

The psychology of money turns us inward, driving us away from one another, because while envy may rot the soul, success alienates us as a whole. The income gap is a status gap is a social gap is an emotional gap is a deafening gap.

When we valorise qualities the world endorses freely like the pursuit of self-interest as the way to wholeness, the religion of self-enrichment as a virtue and the thrill of hyper-competitiveness to get what we want, we turn society into an endless race, where we are too distracted to stop and share, to wait and bear, and to touch and care. 

This social disease isolates us all, causes us to chase unrealistic expectations and makes us put our self-worth on things superficial, impermanent. This dog-eat-dog world rev up our animalistic (tribalistic) instincts; thus the baser part of us prevails over the better angels of ourselves. 

Honestly, this social struggle for sanity is inherent in our system. As the proof is in the pudding, so is one of the cure in society. The incremental goal for the vulnerable is to prevent them from moving too far out in their own life. And even if they do, to consciously create a life-affirming community that is always looking out for them, looking out for that wave from a distance, in the active hope of saving a soul from drowning.