By Samantha Shamim (Mental Health Advocate, Contributor at JWGTherapy@gmail.com)
Imagine this fairly typical conversation with a friend or family member:
Person 1:“Hey, how are you?”
Person 2:“I’m sick. I haven’t been feeling well.”
Person 1:“Oh, no! What’s wrong?”
Person 2:“I have _________, and they’ve been hitting me hard this past week.”
Person 1:“Oh…”
Person 2:“Yeah…”
Person 1:“I mean, that’s it? Have you tried praying or fixing it on your own? Just do those and get healthy, think positively, and you’ll be all good.”
Person 2:“Um, I mean, I have tried those. It’s genetic, I can’t control it.”
Person 1:“There are worse things in the world, man. So many people are worse off than you. Stop being so spoiled and start appreciating what you have, then you won’t have time to be having ______. You aren’t special, everyone deals with stuff like this. People actually have life-threatening diseases--”
Person 2:“This is life-threatening. And even if it wasn’t, my pain is still valid. And regardless of if others are or are not going through mental health issues, the level of commonality among me and the rest of the world does not invalidate the seriousness of my struggles. If a bunch of people were killed across a state, one person’s death would not be less significant or serious in the consideration of the numbers. If everyone in a room broke their arms, they would all need to get professional help.”
Were you able to guess what words went into those blanks? The ones I had in mind were ‘mental health issues.”
Today’s society downplays the seriousness of mental health issues, and it must stop. Just like any other organ of your body that is significant to your functioning, your brain is extremely essential to your well-being and ability to go on with your life. It is extremely inconsiderate and demeaning for someone to discredit someone else’s struggle, mental or physical--overall, someone else’s health issues. Both categories of health issues are connected--for instance, your mental state can affect your physical state, and vice versa.
For those who don’t take mental health issues seriously, consider that having them is disabling and even life-threatening. Mental health issues, such as anxiety for instance, can render someone froze and unconscious. Others lead to death, such as untreated depression that results in suicide.
So the question is: why is there a distinction between mental health and so-called “physical” health, when they are so interconnected and congruent in significance to each other? When the consequences are dire in issues concerning both categories?
While it’s understandable to separate mental health and physical health into two categories to better study and analyze each type of issue, the separation of mental health from physical health in a society where going to the doctor usually entails reference of something other than someone’s mental wellness results negatively. It suggests that going to the doctor for mental health is secondary to physical health; ultimately, mental health is not perceived as the priority it should be.
Perhaps a more effective approach to take in this society is to minimize the distinction between mental and physical health. Instead of continuing with the popular approach of specifying when something is a mental health issue while not putting the word ‘physical’ before the word ‘health’ when describing physical health issues with regards to the culture’s assumption of ‘health’ referring primarily to physical health, society should take the approach of focusing on overall ‘wellness’ rather than health.
This means that we would be focusing on improving our health, mental and physical, while equating the two types of health by the same weight on a single scale. This new categorization of both types of health into the same group will promote society to pay the same seriousness to mental health issues as they do to ‘physical’ health issues.
If you or someone you care about are struggling with your wellness, Jackson Wellness Group provides services to specifically treat mental health issues. They focus on improving your wellness, and in turn, on improving your mental health.
Jackson Wellness Group (JWGTherapy.com) provides mental health services for youth, adults, individuals and groups. We provide in-person and online confidential sessions which seek to promote long term wellness. Schedule a session now!