Are We Two-Faced About Mental Health?
I’ve written about mental health on and off for six years now, probably because I’m some small degree of crazy with various slices of problems. I also just find it hysterical that we have a relatively small country of 330 million people, with tons of money coursing through it, and we are so bad at helping people mentally.
I think I can explain a little bit of it, though. Let me quickly walk through some of the problems I’ve seen and then I’ll see if I can do anything about solutions.
The Self-Care Paradox
In the last 10 years, there’s been a big push towards “self-care,” which is nice and admittedly people do deserve that. The problem is: often, “self-care” means getting rid of anyone that makes you uncomfortable, and usually people like addicts and those struggling and those in your orbit who are depressed will make you uncomfortable. So you push them further away, which in the process alienates them more, but you feel better. That’s a lose-win, not a win-win.
The Friendship Recession
If you are a married adult with children and a job, your priority order is usually — and this varies by person, but it’s usually true:
And yes, I put “job” above “spouse,” because a lot of people operate that way. Bad bosses ruin sex lives too.
At best, “friendship” is a fourth priority for most adults. Is this true of everyone? No. But it’s true of almost everyone. It’s hard to claim we value “connection” and “community” when most people are like, “Hey, you free Wednesday? No? Well, I guess I’ll see you in nine weeks.”
A Lot Of Therapists Are Trash
Since I turned 27, I’ve been to 12 different therapists, for varying lengths of time. One of them was any good. It’s very hard to talk circles around a therapist at some level. And plus, in the 1970s and 1980s, “therapist” — at least with a MD — was a job that could get you a nice house and good trappings. I think a lot of the wrong people went into therapy because of the money. Now the money has seemingly dried up a little bit, but I still think we kinda have the wrong people in the profession. Plus: I’ve heard for years that there is a shortage of good therapists, especially for children. I’d believe that.
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The Bootstraps Narrative
In America, when you’re struggling — especially around money — we tell you to “pull yourself up” and “make it work.” We do that with mental health a lot too, even though “earning your rent” and “feeling mentally OK” are very different things. Some of this also goes to parenting, especially fathering, which can be reluctant to even acknowledge mental health as an issue.
Bad Parenting
Parenting has been made more complex in the last two decades (it’s an Olympic sport to many now), but that’s also made parents worse at the core responsibilities of parenting, which has downstream implications on children’s mental health as they develop in, ahem, formative years. Most parents would never claim they are bad at parenting short of their kid shooting up a school, but many parents who think they’re amazing at it are, at best, trifling at it.
Individualism
Americans often pride themselves on this, but it leaves a lot of people just out in the ether with no one to talk to or no community to find.
Really Seeing Others
We’re not great at making others feel seen or as if they matter. I had a good example of that just yesterday. I’ve been talking about my challenges with fatherhood for four years now. Yesterday was Father’s Day. Not a single person in my life, male or female, reached out to me and said, “Hey, I know today might be tough for you. I’m sorry.” Even if they’re not sorry, stuff like that would be nice to hear. But, no one really gives a shit. On Mother’s Days, my wife hears from 2–3 girlfriends. It used to be 8–10. As more and more women get theirs and focus there, they don’t really care about others or have time to see what’s going on around them. We live in very superficial boxes.
So, Can We Do Anything?
I’m not sure, and the combination of parenting as Olympic sport, inflation, exhaustion, burnout, politics, Trump, social media, et al may have finally doomed us. The easiest way, to me, would be to try and care about others and reach out to them and say, “Hey, how are things going?” Of course, people often barely do that with their own spouse, so I’m not sure I can ask you to do that with acquaintances.
My own personal bullshit is a different slide. I got divorced and lost basically all my friends minus 4–5 in that process, which sucked and I didn’t fully process for a few years. I also spent a huge chunk of my 30s day-drinking and sometimes sending weird, off-task texts to people that I’m sure cost me some other friendships. I understand why not many people care that much about me and my struggles, but I think we could be better about this overall.
Your take on American mental health and the supposed calls for “connection?”