External to Internal
By: Jonnie Bloor
Tags: Mental Illness, Mental Health Awareness, Mental Health

External to Internal

Ruminating. It’s something I do quite a bit, especially when I’m feeling really low. or on the precipice of a breakdown. As someone who suffers with clinical depression and anxiety I’m all too aware of the effects this has on my life and of those close to me, and how one little thought can explode into a devastating paralysis of function and connection with the world, my family and friends.

I continue to explore the root cause or causes of my affliction, and how seemingly disperate events and actions do indeed connect to one another contributing to the person I am and the way I see things and respond to the world I inhibit.

It is this world which has got me ruminating at various points over the past number of years, a specific topic that I have revisited time and again. That is to say, not about it’s many wonders or the forces that make it such a deeply inspiring and incredible place to live, but on the impacts of people and their chosen way of life, their choices, decisions and priorities on me and how I have struggled to find my place in it, respond to it and how those choices and decisions have ultimately been a factor in my depression.

“No man is an island’, wrote the poet John Donne; we are not standalone beings untouched or unaffected by the whirling lives of others or by the direction of the breeze, we are connected, a topological space of seas crashing, and peoples migrating, of great beasts moving across savannas in search of food and water, of forests breathing, of hope and friendship, peace and war; the yin and the yang. We are also victims, victims to those who betray us, who pay lip service to our interests, but service only theirs.

Newton’s third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Granted, when the great scientist pronounced this I don’t think he was referring to mental health, but it is certainly true in this arena. When a person behaves in a certain way it will undoubtedly affect another person, be that intentionally or not. So this is true of societies, governments and movements. Here is the nub of the repetitive thoughts I have had — has the last decade of right-wing governments, of destructive causes all in the name of a false ideology and bank balances impacted my depression, and if so, how?

Both globally and in my own country we have seen events and elections, referendums and agreements, Twitter announcements and dogma stolen from the far-right of the past to try to justify, legitimise or normalise corrosive narratives of the present.

Be that the whole Brexit fiasco — a purely ideological calamity permitted by a weak leader, fuelled by lies, corruption and vested interests that has only one overall outcome, a slow erosive destruction of the UK in its standing globally, the opportunities it is afforded, and its economic security — or the multitude of assaults on decency and basic human rights, such as the Windrush scandal, or separating parents from their children in America, or the failure on residents and communities by a local authority and a national government relating to the Grenfell tragedy, to the hostile environment policy, to electing racists to lead democratic nations, to poverty rocketing across the globe, to the huge swell of reliance on food banks, to all the damage created by austerity, to handing over billions of pounds of public money to private companies who seem to fail at every turn, and to members of the government who can behave illegally or against the rules and get a free pass. The list goes on.

The cumulative result of this never-ending waterfall of harm and destruction impacts how society sees itself and how it functions. If people are told to look out for just themselves (as they have been since the 1980’s) then that is what they do; if the press conflate asylum seeker with illegal migrant then that is how their readers will start to see anyone who is not from their country yet tries to be part of it, and as such our humanity starts to dissolve, people lose sight of what unites us and focus more on what divides us, and with each tabloid lie and government policy that division is widened further. People look to see how they can get ahead of the next person, be that in a queue in traffic, or at the local shop, or for a vaccine in a pandemic.

Drop into this world a person who has ill mental health — and that’s at least one in four of us at any one time — and you can start to see how this might affect someone’s depression as their search for positivity, for validation, acceptance and understanding battles on. From first hand experience I look for chinks of humanity, of connection and of people thinking of one another and how they interact and relate. It’s sometimes these little things that affect me the most. But they are not, like people, an island of themselves. These seemingly small or inconsequential activities or moments stem from the larger messages, implicit or otherwise. For example, sometimes I can be really quite affected by what some people might consider innocuous things — the proliferation that seems to deem it a personality flaw to admit when you’re wrong, or by the lack of consideration to others such as parking on pavements or by passing a cyclist too close, or people thinking that just because they can that means they should or they will, irrespective of anyone else. When every day can be a real struggle these actions can have a big effect. When you’re holding out for humanity and it lets you down, it can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

The larger, national conversations, feed into this directly. Consider how the message might filter into society when people at the top of national government who repeatedly act against rules or laws, or whose behaviour causes harm to others are enabled to escape any form of consequence equal to that of wider society, or even greater given they set a tone, an example.

Perhaps someone with bipolar forsaked seeing their loved ones and getting the support they needed during the pandemic whilst those in more elevated circumstances could do what they wanted; or maybe a person was being bullied because of their mental health and now daren’t speak out because the tone set, the message relayed by our Prime Minister is that bullying is ok.

The damage is real, and it’s no wonder that ill mental health is now the single largest cause of disability in the UK (22.8%*) and of overall disease worldwide (13%, or 971 million people**). This is backed up by the year-on-year rise of people seeking therapies for their mental health:

Number of people who entered treatment after referral to IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) services, England.***

So if we agree that the issue is there, and I’m taking that if you’re still here you are, in part or whole, with me that mental health issues are rising and they are caused in part by society, which in turn gets its cue from how our leaders carry themselves and the words the use, then we come to this — why does it affect me this much?

I’ve thought about this and come to the conclusion that it boils down to rejection. Not of my own beliefs, that would be arrogant in the extreme, but of a more generalised decency and respect of people and their lives. A rejection of the notion itself of us being in it together, to collectively behave in a manner that does not treat others with disdain, or bigotry, or with an us and them mentality, and rather with hope and positivity. In a world ravaged by COVID-19 and with other external depressors ranging from destructive policies (in terms of limiting previously enjoyed freedoms) to a leadership that fails to recognise or even care about the impact it has by adhering to an ideology of the few at the top, to not saying thank you when someone holds a door open or lets you though in your car, or that passes a cyclist too close depression and thereby suicide will sadly only increase.

So in short, be nice. It’s not difficult. Consider others, elevate yourself in your words and your actions, and in so doing you’ll be helping me and millions like me, and for that I thank you.

* Department of Health, No Health Without Wealth: A Cross-Government Mental Health Outcomes Strategy for People of All Ages, (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/215808/dh_123993.pdf)

** IMHE, Global Burden of Disease, (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6227754/pdf/main.pdf)

*** NICE, Impact Mental Health, March 2019, (https://www.nice.org.uk/media/default/about/what-we-do/into-practice/measuring-uptake/niceimpact-mental-health.pdf)