{"id":77124,"date":"2025-05-05T18:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T18:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/77124\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T18:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T18:29:08","slug":"mental-health-awareness-month-is-a-progressive-vanity-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/77124\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Health Awareness Month is a progressive vanity project"},"content":{"rendered":"

May is \u201cMental Health Awareness Month\u201d. In a crowded<\/a> contest<\/a> for the most pointless of all profession-peddled<\/a> observances, this might be the winner. Mental Health Awareness Month is actually worse than pointless, though. That\u2019s because excessive attention to mental wellness is over-medicalising the healthy and neglecting the seriously mentally ill.<\/p>\n

Mental Health Awareness Month was officially proclaimed<\/a> in 2013 by former president Barack Obama to \u201cshine a light\u201d on \u201cdebilitating illnesses\u201d. Obama put \u201canxiety, depression\u201d and \u201cbipolar disorder\u201d all in that same category, erasing the line between common distress and serious disorder. An ever-inflating \u201cDSM<\/a>\u201d \u2014 the mental health field\u2019s diagnostic tool \u2014 has formally done the same. The DSM was originally around 100 pages, listing around 100 diagnoses. Now in its fifth version, it\u2019s ten times longer and clinically classifies everything from jetlag to bad premenstrual syndrome<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Psychiatric disorders can appear on a range of severity, but few \u2014 and few cases \u2014 are truly debilitating. Serious mental illness most often is, and typically includes schizophrenia (affecting less than 1%<\/a> of adults) and bipolar disorder (less than 3%<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The seriously mentally ill face many bad outcomes. They live 15-20 years less<\/a>, on average, and are disproportionately homeless<\/a>, incarcerated<\/a>, drug- and alcohol-addicted<\/a>, uneducated<\/a> and unemployed<\/a>. They\u2019re often said to have \u201cfallen through the cracks\u201d as if unnoticed, but social service agencies know exactly<\/a> who they are. It\u2019s therefore hard to buy the justification for such pervasive awareness efforts: mental disorder goes untreated because it goes unrecognised.<\/p>\n

Do people lack awareness of mental disorders? Nearly one in four<\/a> American adults \u2014 and one in three adolescents<\/a> \u2014 received mental health services in 2023. \u201cMental health\u201d has been searched on TikTok over 67 billion times<\/a>. It\u2019s fashionable to self-diagnose: the DSM is an Amazon bestseller, while a common green flag for dating is being in therapy.<\/p>\n

Given that half of all adults<\/a> will eventually receive a mental diagnosis, anything still considered to have \u201cgone unrecognised\u201d could only be the most mildly symptomatic, functional cases \u2014 or normal human eccentricities yet to be reclassified as psychiatric problems.<\/p>\n

Awareness has us thinking that we are sick. Members of Generation Z, who have grown up \u201caware\u201d, are the most treated<\/a> and most open<\/a> to discussing mental health, but the least likely<\/a> to say their mental health is good. Older generations, who weren\u2019t constantly encouraged to focus on their feelings, are happier on average. Paying less attention to mental health, it seems, reduces overmedicalisation and protects against actually feeling bad.<\/p>\n

Treatment doesn\u2019t help those who aren\u2019t sick, so calling everyone with emotions \u201cmentally unwell\u201d only misdirects resources away from the people who are most in need. Take the perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting<\/a>, which motivated Obama\u2019s awareness efforts. The \u201cpredisposing factor in this tragedy\u201d, a psychiatrist involved in the case said<\/a>, was that the shooter\u2019s mental illness went untreated. But not because it hadn\u2019t been spotted. His \u201cprofound emotional disabilities<\/a>\u201d were identified six years before he killed 20 children and six adults.<\/p>\n

More recently, a seriously mentally ill man<\/a> went off his medication for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. His family had been trying to have him hospitalised, without success, when he was arrested for trying to kill Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro last month.<\/p>\n

Awareness campaigns downplay the link between violence and mental illness, supposedly to reduce \u201cstigma\u201d. In reality, serious mental illness, when left untreated, increases<\/a> the risk<\/a> of violence<\/a> and<\/a> self<\/a>\u2013harm<\/a>. Distracting from this reality undermines the systemic reform needed to reduce mental illness-related violence \u2014 which is what really perpetuates stigma<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If greater distinction were made between schizophrenia and mild depression, it would be easier to demand accountability from the mental health system as to why it so routinely fails to treat those at risk of danger to themselves and others. Instead, Mental Health America, the publicly-funded<\/a> industry group behind this month\u2019s \u201ccelebration\u201d, is offering colouring pages<\/a> and tips for \u201celiminating toxic relationships<\/a>\u201d. Hope that makes you feel better.<\/p>\n

A flood of emails and ads have been sent out in recent days to encourage practices like \u201cfocusing on you\u201d. Ignore them. What really needs attention is how badly we are failing the seriously mentally ill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May is \u201cMental Health Awareness Month\u201d. In a crowded contest for the most pointless of all profession-peddled observances,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[2665,5555,1301,105,218,9807,11187,3283,980,4768,4678,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-77124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-anxiety","9":"tag-awareness","10":"tag-depression","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-mental-illness","14":"tag-non-classifiu00e9e","15":"tag-none","16":"tag-optional","17":"tag-schizophrenia","18":"tag-society","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114456648979475866","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}