Mental Health is Cool AF
By: Benefsheh Verell
Tags: Veterans, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Mental Health Awareness, Military

Mental Health is Amazing, Beautiful, and Cool. This is what we need to tell ourselves, our service members, and our veterans. Mental Health and wellness is NOT something to consider only after receiving a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress, depression, or anxiety.

Yet I still feel like mental health is on the back burner for the Army when it comes to everyday training and in the workplace. Why is this? Why doesn’t our society view mental hygiene like we do physical hygiene? Why can’t personal hygiene after PT (physical training) include five minutes of meditation?

We’ve got a serious suicide problem among our service members and veterans. The current administration has published PREVENTS, President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide. The premise is a holistic approach to suicide prevention. The policy seeks to change the culture surrounding mental health and suicide prevention.

This is a good place to start, but I think we can approach mental health differently and not just in relation to suicide prevention. Mental health and wellness need to become as common as driving a vehicle or riding a bike. It needs to be something we learn to do because it’s a part of growing up.

We go to the dentist and doctor for regular check ups because we want to stay physically healthy. This is preventative medicine. Why can’t we go to counselors or psychologists for regular checkups because we want to stay mentally healthy?

It’s time for a paradigm shift. The standard military top down approach doesn’t seem to be working when it comes to suicide prevention. I don’t think many leaders and Soldiers want more online training or another certificate. I don’t think people want to be told they have to meditate or practice mindfulness. Then it becomes yet another mandatory training event to sit and daydream through.

What we need is a way to inspire young service members to want to practice mindfulness, meditate, and take care of their mental health on their own. It needs to be fun and enjoyable, not all serious.

What would inspire this population to meditate or try mindfulness practices? What if someone like Ryan Reynolds, Ali Wong, or Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson did a youtube series on their own journey to mindfulness?

What if the video was entertaining but also informative? Can you see them sitting in meditation with the voice over of their thoughts playing? Can you envision the realness, rawness, and vulnerability of it while still being engaging?

Meditation does not have to be serious, especially when trying to get people to try it for the first time. The results of meditation are very serious. The science and research back the claims. We just need people to want to make the choice to start.

We could leverage our popular entertainers and athletes to share their own journeys. Visually documenting mentally healthy people practicing meditation and mindfulness lets everyone know that this is something you can do because you want to take care of yourself, like exercising and eating healthy.

The military leadership seems to convey that these practices are for those who have mental health “issues” or for elite units, performers and athletes, not the masses.

The message seems to be that mindfulness is important and worth putting some resources to, but not so important to get all the leadership behind a movement of systematic change in culture. That of course is my opinion based on my experience in the Army, retiring in 2017.

Let’s have a mindset shift. For an organization as large as the Army to radically shift, they will need it to come from outside themselves. Radical and disruptive ideas can create change quickly. We don’t have to go through the bureaucracy of the DoD and the VA. We don’t have time for that. People are killing themselves everyday.

Hence my suggestion to leverage celebrity influence or people that these Soldiers look up to or watch regularly. Someone who is not afraid of being vulnerable. For if you sit and observe your thoughts for five or more minutes, some weird stuff is going to come up. People need to know that it is normal and okay.

I think those celebrities, like comedians, that put their thoughts on display with humor, could use the same approach in describing their mindfulness experiences and any changes that they notice about themselves.

I’ve written about this before. The Ryan Reynolds Mindfulness Project was a wacky idea I came up with after a night of disturbing Deadpool dreams. I welcome discussion on this topic. What solution can we offer to this problem that could compliment what the administration and military are already doing?

Benef Verell is a retired Army officer and author of “Military and Mindful.” www.benefverell.com