It is 2020 and mental health is still a big taboo in the western societies. We increasingly talk about "mental health awareness" and wellbeing at the workplace; but these mostly stay at the discourse level. We are still very scared of talking about mental health, especially from a personal standpoint. We talk about it in a depersonalised manner, even though, globally, at least 1 in 10 people have mental health conditions.
There are two major barriers that prevent us from talking about our mental health struggles:
This empisode is about the first one.
Our individual thoughts, feelings and beliefs that prevent us from talking openly about our mental health problems and keep us silent are mostly FEAR-based.
We are still very much afraid of having mental health problems.
It is easy to label symptoms of mental health ocnditions as "character defects" or "character flaws".
It is difficult and lengthy to get our mental health conditions diagnosed.
Mental illnesses may manifest differently for each one of us suffering from them.
Another negative effect mental illnesses may have on our lives and careers: the fear of not being accepted, the fear of being judged, the fear of being isolated…
Next week:
Silence and stigma around mental health in relation to the people around us.
Today's thought exercise:
If you have had mental health issues yourself, especially if they were somewhat related to your academic work, were you able to talk about it? If you did talk about it, what was the reaction? If you didn’t, why was that?
If you never had such struggles, have you ever had a colleague who talked about their mental health problems openly in the workplace? What was the reaction they received?
Cited in this episode:
* Fact sheet on Depression, World Health Organisation, January 30, 2020: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression
** Yorick Peterse, “The Stigma on Mental Health Issues”, Academic Mental Health Collective, July 26, 2018: https://amhcollective.com/2018/07/26/the-stigma-on-mental-health-issues/
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