There's More To Do For Mental Health Than Morning Teas.

This World Mental Health Day, let's take a moment to acknowledge that poor (and good) mental health, does not happen in a vacuum.

Poor mental health can be temporary, it can be long-term. It can be related to events that have happened, and it can be related to physical and biochemical deficiencies. Poor mental health can come on quickly and leave quickly, or it can come on slowly, and leave slowly.
 
One thing we need to acknowledge though, is that telling people that it’s ok to have poor mental health is not the same as changing the environments and resources around those who are struggling.

Some poor mental health outcomes are completely rational;
 
It is hard to have great mental health if your housing is insecure, unaffordable, short-term, lacking amenity, unsafe and if you have no choices at all about where to live.
 
It is hard to have great mental health if you are swamped in debt that you have accumulated in an effort to simply exist. Economic insecurity rapidly leads to poor mental health outcomes, so unemployed, disengaged individuals, with no relevant, long-term pathways to meaningful, adequate employment is a massive contributor to poor mental health outcomes.

It is hard to have great mental health if your physical health is in dire straits and you do not have access to the treatment and support you need to improve it.
 
It is hard to have great mental health if you cannot get consistent, well supported and affordable access to psychiatric and psychological help. People experiencing poor mental health may need psychiatric help, but psychiatry is an inexact science. It requires regular tweaking and adjusting to ensure that those suffering have the best chance of finding some balance and getting a chance to improve their mental health. This is a challenge if you cannot afford the consults or the drugs. This is a challenge if you have no support and nowhere to be for the 20-60 days it can take for some psychiatric drugs to take effect.

It is hard to have great mental health if you are in the throes of grief, and in fact, it is totally rational to be feeling down during moments of extreme sadness. However, It can be hard if you are isolated, lacking support and at risk of losing your house, your job and control of your life while you deal with your grief.
 
It is hard to have great mental health if you have no agency, or control over your life. You can lose agency through overbearing parents, abusive relationships, economic instability, a lack of education, living in an environment where there are limited choices as to what you can do, where you can go, what you can afford. A lack of agency and feelings of despair can occur for a wide variety of reasons, many of them environmental, cultural and completely rational.
 
It is hard to have great mental health if you live in isolation. Isolation because you are physically remotely isolated, isolated because you have inadequate mobility options, isolated because you have to work three jobs and have no time to engage with your friends, economically isolated because you cannot afford to spend time engaging in leisure or community activities.
 
It is hard to have great mental health if you feel that you are unable to provide for your family. For some this is the result of being unable to provide their children with food everyday, and for others it’s because they cannot provide their children with a Mercedes instead of a Hyundai. This is because mental health and everyone’s experience of it is relative.
 
It is hard to have great mental health, if there is no trust that when you reach out you will get the help that you need, when you need it, for as long as you need it. For some people, they just need an ear, for others, they need access to opportunity and support in myriad ways to create an environment where they can thrive mentally. This is why the Just Be Nice Project exists to actively take responsibility for, and work towards adequate housing, employment and mental health outcomes in tandem.
 
It may be ok to not be ok, but as long as we also believe it is ok to have extreme levels of inequality, isolation, injustice, disadvantage and inequality of opportunity, we are abandoning people to poor mental health outcomes regardless of how many morning teas we throw on World Mental Health Day.

If you'd like to support our work (and we definitely need your support!) you can do so by joining our community of subscribers who are committed to the best possible outcomes for those in need here.