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Mental health - the silent killer


I am going to stray off from the common theme of this blog for one week to just talk a little about an issue that the vast majority of people know of, but less than we think are fully aware of, mental health. Because although it isn’t necessarily ‘in the news’ at this given moment, it importance should always be paramount to all.

The clear danger with all mental health problems is simply that it is so incredibly hard to identify them.

According to the Mental Health Foundation, 10% of children from the ages 5-16 have a clinically diagnosable health problem, and 70% of these people are not receiving the right help at a sufficient age. Furthermore, 1 in 6 people have experienced some sort of mental health issue at any single point in the last week, something which perhaps may pass us by in our everyday lives.

This is alarming to say the least, especially in a society where we have seen significant scientific developments in the last few centuries, in medication etc, and show that there is clearly a lot of work still to be done in this aspect.

The first acknowledgement of mental health was in the mid-19th century, when William Sweetser first coined any term similar to mental health, citing ‘mental hygiene’, sparking further development into the matter.

Dorothea Dix spent her life, in the same century, working on helping patients who had mental health problems, and often helping bring to light and make people aware of the awful conditions that many were left in – as a result of mental illnesses, a significant proportion found themselves neglected.

Her work led to a marked rise in the number of mental health patients, and regretfully, many of these were unable to be treated properly due to understaffing.

Without wanting to just simply keep throwing statistics at this, is it also estimated that 1 in 17 people are affected by a serious mental health disorder in the whole world. This means that of the approximately 4.5 billion people on the planet, around 450 million of them struggle with a serious mental health issue.

Mental health disorders are more common than cancer, diabetes and heart disease. It is deplorable to me as to why there seems to be such a stigma around them, and how often ignored they are, surely this cannot be right?

It has become common place in society, from personal experience, to place these disorders into our everyday lives – yet in the wrong context. It may be slight, but we slip little words like ‘depressing’ into our language a little too often, which perhaps lessens its true meaning and the disorder that emanates from it.

The results of Dix’s findings in this field are a clear example that even with advancements we are still some way from totally combating mental health. As her awareness grew and the knowledge of this spread, people realised the assistance was there.

But it also revealed that there were many who only felt confident to speak out about it when there was someone who they thought could help. And that proves the danger – for all we know there could be millions more people suffering in serious ways.

And yet we still choose to bury our heads in the sand about it.

There is very little, if anything, about William Sweetser on the internet. The first person to put a label to one of the most problematic things in our world in the present moment, and he is not even heard of?

Whilst it may be a little far-fetched to suggest that without him, many of the victims to suicide and other harms because of mental health wouldn’t have suffered in the way they did, this is still good food for thought.

I’m not going to try and chastise anyone for a perhaps ‘ignorance’ that we, as a society, show towards it in general, because that callously defeats the point. But it is more a general message that I just feel needs to be put out there.

But the simple fact is, that mental health problems are ever increasing.

It seems only natural that the brain, as complex and as useful as it is, has limitations. And it is up to us to try and control those limitations of one another, by supporting and being there for them.

No one can truly comprehend what goes on in someone else’s head. But everyone can do their utmost to show compassion and recognise that these are so much more prevalent than is universally mentioned.

Put concisely, neglecting mental health problems further, will increase their devastating impact on us all.

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