By: Willis Cooks, Clinical Social Worker
Suicides, mass shootings and discussions around anxiety and depression have propelled mental health into the national debate. Many campaigns have surfaced to fight the stigma of mental health. Many people suffer in silence due to the shame that often comes with it.
As a Clinical Social Worker, I’ve learned that many people – and many of my patients – do not believe mental health should be normalized.
The side for normalizing mental health argues that mental health is a normal part of life. Normalizing it would do two things: give people the strength to speak about their experience and end the stigma around mental health. I can almost guarantee that there is someone within your circle who is fighting a silent battle. The choice to go it alone does more harm than we think. We say that those who aren’t vulnerable are strong. However, how easy is it to keep things to ourselves versus taking a risk and releasing ourselves to the world? That risk equals strength, which is why the normalization of mental health is important.
The side against the normalization of mental health argues that mental health is something that should not be taken lightly. By normalizing mental health, we diminish those who are clinically diagnosed with a mental illness. How many people do you know say they have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) but just like things clean? How many say they have bipolar disorder just because they can go from 0 to 100 at the snap of their fingers? How many say they are depressed when they may just be sad? People who are clinically diagnosed with a mental disorder go through rigorous therapy in order to reach a stable point. They fight every day just to get stable, so to say that your mental health or mental illness should be normalized is dismissive.
In order to further understand this debate, we must first understand that although mental health and mental illness are similar, they are not the same. These two terms are used interchangeably and are often misused.
We have to understand that just like our physical health, our mental health has and will always be a part of our lives. Would you agree that being happy, sad, mad, calm, frustrated, stressed out, excited, scared, and any other emotion are normal emotions that we all feel based upon what happens in our life? That’s our mental health and it isn’t going anywhere.
Regarding mental illness, there are two elements that distinguish the difference: time and functionality. The symptoms you have when you are sad are similar to those of depression but how long have you had these symptoms – a few weeks or a few months? Do these symptoms cause some type of impairment in your daily activity?
Due to this, we must aim to normalize mental health while not normalizing mental illness. Your mental health turns into mental illness when you aren’t able to function. If you are sad, stay home, isolate, don’t shower, aren’t able to work, then you may not be sad but depressed. Your mental health may have shifted to mental illness and with that comes the need for a clinical diagnosis. However, some people who are on the mental illness end of the spectrum aren’t diagnosed or are misdiagnosed.
We don’t want to minimize the pain of those who are suffering. We can’t get out of it by saying it is normal to have a mental illness. Sometimes we can shift back and forth between mental health and mental illness. That’s fine as long as we continue to strive for positive mental health. That’s the goal: Having good mental health by aggressively attacking that mental illness.
