Mental Health Training

Yesterday for work I had a training titled, 'Working With Families With Mental Health Challenges.' I thought to myself this would be a boring unimportant thing for me because A. I have mental health challenges and can relate and B. I deal with people as crazy if not crazier than me regularly already. It was taught by a therapist, that's new and gave him some credibility in my eyes, so I was interested a little in what he was going to tell people.

It started with a simple question for clarification purposes. What is mental health? Of course there was the disclaimer, that there are no right or wrong answers, that's never true but these trainers and therapists always manage to accept any of the off-the-wall comments with positivity and grace. The answer is it's your overall mental state, just like gut health or heart health, it can be good or bad, and should fluctuate based on life. "Good mental health includes normal mood fluctuations," he said. He showed us something new to me, a mental health literacy pyramid. Y'all should look it up, but I will probably include it in this post. I saw it and immediately thought of my own mental health, and that sometimes I am in more than one stage. He said people can actually be in all the stages at once, even "normal" people.

He covered a lot of material on how people end up with mental illnesses, things that are not scientific factors, broke down signs and symptoms of the more common mental illnesses and how we can support people with them. I want to share the biggest takeaways for ME though.

• The language we use is important. If you wouldn't say it about other illnesses in the body, don't say it about mental health.

  • Ex. I am a little OCD/Bipolar/ADHD.

    • You can't be a little of any of these. You either have the indicators of this disorder or you don't. You wouldn't say, "I'm a little bit in need of a heart" when you are on the transplant list for heart failure, you either need a new one because yours failed or you don't. George disagreed with this and made a point. Yes, sometimes people do have a few or many indicators of some of these, but it can come across as insensitive to someone who really struggles with the diagnosis to make light of it or compare. For example, your strong need to keep organized does not exactly compare with a person with OCD needing to wash so often their skin is damaged.

  • Ex. Just snap out of it. OR Smile and be happy, it isn't that bad.

    • People that actually have these symptoms as part of their mental illness can't. How ridiculous would you feel saying, "Try harder to control your asthma" or "Can't you manage your cancer symptoms"?

  • Ex. Can't you just get on some medication?

    • First of all, that's just rude. Second, some people have severe and persistent mental illnesses that do not respond to some treatments. Because no two brains are alike, it sometimes takes experimenting with different types of medications before a person finds one that works for them.

  • Ex. Are you off your meds?

    • Again, RUDE! Have you ever been prescribed an antibiotic or pain medication that you stopped taking before the prescribed timeline because you were feeling better? It is extremely common for people with many different mental illnesses to stop their medications because they start to doubt that they have a problem at all when they feel better or are functioning more successfully on meds. I know I personally considered quitting mine once because I simply did not feel like myself, it barely occurred to me that the healthier version of me was the one my family needed.

Most people have someone in their life that has a mental illness. Some hide it, some medicate it, some clearly struggle, and some are open and vocal about it, like me. I have said from the start I want to aid in ending the stigma around discussing mental health. People have no problem telling their friends and bosses they have IBS or chronic migraines that affect them daily, but people get really weird about others thinking they are crazy, like it translates into incapable. I can be described many many ways, but I do not think I have ever viewed myself or been told I am incapable and I live with more than one mental illness diagnosis.

There was more to this training that I want to touch on too, but that is a whole different take away and I think this has been enough food for thought today. What you say matters. How you view people that have differences in their health, mental or otherwise, matters. Every behavior has a reason, whether you know what that reason is or not, so my sage advice today, do not judge, be kind, and try to think before you speak.