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Nothing makes me more angry than the notion, peddled cynically by corporations, that the current mental health crisis can be alleviated by 'talking to your mates'. Ofc it helps to have support but it is an attempt to stop us talking about MH as a political issue, which it 100% is
I have attempted suicide more than once and have had periods of severe depression lasting months at a time. I have found that talking to friends and family helps, of course it does. But it doesn't stop the thoughts returning, and it doesn't make material prospects any less bleak
The onus being put on the sufferer, culminating in hashtags like #itsoknottobeok, genuinely makes me sick. Of course it's not my fault that I feel this way, but it is not ok. It is not ok that countless people feel this way and the only support they receive is from loved ones.
People need support from social services and a properly equipped NHS. It's no coincidence that the ONS figures for 2019 show suicide rates among men to be highest in Yorkshire & the Humber, the NE, Wales and the SW. It is absolutely crystal clear what is happening here.
Crucially, people need support from their employers. Work-related stress is naturally a leading cause of mental health problems, yet those who hold the real power to help are under absolutely no pressure to do so, and most often do not feel obliged. A poisonous political culture.
I am absolutely sick to death of the rich and powerful patronising their way through campaigns like this, for a bank (A BANK!) When I asked for a £300 extension to my £200 overdraft when I was at uni, my bank made me feel like a serf and denied it.
People have been writing about this for a while. Mark Fisher called it 'the privatisation of stress' 8 years ago, and he has since taken his own life. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental-health-political-issue
What pains me most is the quote that in current society "access to the top is open to anyone willing to work hard enough, regardless of their familial, ethnic or social background – if you do not succeed, there is only one person to blame." As someone who excelled academically,
yet sees himself as a failure career-wise, this hit me hard. The time off I have taken to take care of my mental health has impacted my prospects so deeply that when we entered a second lockdown, I started writing a suicide note. This wasn't due to a chemical imbalance, or a lack
of a support network, but of total despair at the fact that not only do I not feel useful to, but almost despised by, a society that values 'hard work' more than any human quality.
