Taboo!

It occurs to me, as it has before, that the phrase "mental health" packs a hell of a wallop. It's taboo. People don't want to talk about it. Like most things taboo, the reality of mental health is surrounded by what essentially amounts to a moat -- a moat which teems with the gnarly-toothed crocodiles of stigma, misconception, shame, fear, and sarcasm.

Most people, when confronted with taboos, metaphorically turn on their heel and run away -- it's easier that way, and safer: after all, if a thing is surrounded by a moat, it must be dangerous, right? So it's better for everyone if we just leave it alone.

Admittedly, there is a thread of defensible logic to that line of thinking regarding taboo subjects like mental health. Sometimes an individual, or even the collective We, can get away with leaving well enough alone; and when the inevitable, if rare, moat crossing occurs, we can conveniently treat it with an authentic, if slightly contrived, shock and horror.
However, the fact of the matter is that we are fascinated by the deep, dark corners of this human experience of ours. We are captivated by taboos. The movies and television shows we watch, the news stories that get all the press, the jokes we tell, the games we play, and the secrets we keep tend to contain material and experiences which are somehow reprehensible, unacceptable, abnormal, and grotesque -- and we secretly devour it with relish and indulgence. Industries thrive on it; we can't tear away from it.

That, to me, is what's truly grotesque: that we can make a mockery or entertainment out of something without having the courage to have an actual conversation about it.
I am here to tell you now that we all, each of us, contain that which is dark, nasty, ugly, grotesque, and taboo. Thankfully, we don't necessarily make even a fraction of it manifest in our behavior, but it's there nevertheless; and it is an important aspect of our humanity. To deny it is folly, for it is indelibly there, whether we want to admit it or not, and it is impossible to bury or deny aspects of ourselves without suffering some sort of consequence.

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Ahh, "mental health"...I wish I had a different phrase for it! It carries such stigma. When I was growing up, I equated mental health and mental illness with people in padded rooms. Anyone with mental health problems, in my view, was utterly crazy, always, and incapacitated with their inexplicable, terrifying weirdness. That may seem naive -- and it is -- but I suspect there are many, many people out there whose own views about mental health and mental illness are not too far off that mark. What a shame. What an unnecessary, inaccurate, and destructive shame.

The truth is that mental health is almost exactly like physical health, in that it evolves, stabilizes, and periodically destabilizes throughout a person's life. By way of an example, a person who lives to a ripe old age has probably enjoyed a relatively healthy life, which has been free, perhaps, from chronic, severe health issues. That same person, however, may have endured a few dozen illnesses throughout their life, ranging from the common cold to bronchitis to the stomach flu to appendicitis. Likewise, a person who has remained "mentally healthy" throughout their life can probably identify instances in which they were intrusively pessimistic, angry, fearful, harried, distracted, sad, "out of control," etc. Some of these instances would certainly be circumstantial, but I'd be willing to bet that at least some of them would be rather difficult to explain.

Let me say this: if you have ever had an unusual emotional experience which has affected your actions, perceptions, and/or interactions with others, then you have experienced a mental health problem -- maybe even (gasp!) a mental illness. It doesn't mean you should have been wrapped up in a straight jacket, or that you should have been committed. It simply means you're human -- and human beings have mental health to contend with. If you can understand that, then you can understand where I'm coming from. There is no intrinsic shame in having a mental health issue; instead, it's one of those things that, well, just is. I urge everyone to consider the universality of mental health. If we can strip away the shame, stigma, and taboo, then we can free ourselves -- individually and collectively -- to offer real assistance to those in need. Chances are good, after all, that we, ourselves, will need that assistance at some point.