What's going wrong with mental health awareness? - with Lucy Foulkes
Despite the recent drive to talk more about mental health, we might be more confused about this topic than ever. Watch the Q&A with Lucy on this topic here: • Q&A: What's going wron...
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Conversations about mental health are now happening everywhere: in the media, at schools and universities, in workplaces and at home. In many ways this is a good thing, but there has been some collateral damage.
In this talk, Lucy Foulkes considers what’s going right in the public conversation, what’s going wrong, and what might be a more helpful way to understand - and talk about - this often controversial subject.
Lucy Foulkes is an academic psychologist and writer. She is a senior research fellow at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families and an honorary lecturer in psychology at UCL. Her research focuses on mental health and social cognition, particularly in adolescence.
She is the author of the book 'What Mental Illness Really Is... (and what it isn't)' (Penguin Random House, 2021), which explores how we talk about mental health and illness. She is currently writing her next book, about adolescence, which is due for publication in 2024.
Copies of Lucy's book What Mental Illness Really Is… (and What It Isn’t) are available from Amazon and all good book shops.
This talk was recorded at the Royal Institution on 7 April 2022.
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I remember a seminar many years ago where someone went to the restroom. The speaker wanted to do an experiment. When the person came back, they were asked if they were ok. Then throughout the day, they were told they were not looking well. At the end of the day, they went to the emergency room feeling ill. thing is, before they went to the restroom, they were feeling fine. Being asked over and over how they were doing, and being told many times they didn't look well, caused them to become physically sick. The same can be said for mental health as well as physical health.
The social causes go untreated, where as the social ends of mental health are too much the primary focus. Anything which aligns the mentally ill person with more manageable ends is seen the cure, but we usually won't afford the time to go to the base of the cause of illness and do the work needed there. Having social systems which prevent negative mental health outcomes in the first place through constructive and helpful means wpuld be the reasonable next step.
In the beginning, you said your talk was less interesting than the talk preceding….I’ve watched a ton of these lectures, and this was one of the most enthralling and informative i have seen…..exceptional job and extremely important issue to raise.
It's been strange. My childhood was dominated by autism, anxiety, and suicidal depression, and for a long time nobody knew much of what was wrong with me (other than the depression a little) because I wasn't talking and these things were not talked about. Then for a while it was completely fine to talk about, stigma removed! But now it's swung right back around to stigma because no one takes it seriously if you had serious suicidal thoughts and plans on how to go through with it, social isolation and self hatred because of autism and not knowing what it was, and social anxiety. The attitude is everyone has everything and nobody takes it seriously. I almost can't have a serious conversation with people to try to help them, at least not *publicly* .
I was smart in school but idk how to actually do anything in society. I dont seem outward with it but Ive often wondered if Im autistic.
Thanks for this - I think this really needed to be said out loud and clear, just like this. I did suffer PTSD that eventually led to hospitalization and years of painful therapy. But if I ever try to talk about my experience, I feel embarrassed because apparently now unless you are a war veteran (which I’m not) PTSD means that you’re just being a drama queen. That actually does some real damage because my very negatively biased self-image really starts to believe it. Trivializing real pain and struggle and simply telling people to “man-up” was and is a real problem, but now we’ve also overcompensated so the net result for people like me is once again losing the word to describe our experience, or even reverting right back to trivializing it.
Have you tried psilocybin??
One thing that has haunted me is that I admitted that a resident medical student labeled me with bipolar disorder one day while interviewing me just after my mom died. I also had recently been run over as a pedestrian which resulted in a shattered ankle which was at the time infected. She would ask me a happy question I could answer with composure. She would ask me a sad question I would break down and cry. This is what she called bipolar disorder. That was over a decade ago and it has has me ever since. My therapists all agree I don’t have bipolar however my MD’s won’t give it up. This has contributed to over a decade of depression and I don’t dare exhibit happiness, excitement, or enthusiasm because that would just prove they are right. How dare I consider any form of happiness. That would be bipolar. 🥺😳😢
Does your MD get extra funding for having someone with a medically recognised label registered in their practise?
@@stephena1196 probably 🤨. I’ll ask.
@@stephena1196 GOOD point!
@@paultruesdale7680 THIS
@@paultruesdale7680 I’m assuming the question mark was addressed to me?! What I meant by “this“ was to say that, on social media, et cetera, “this“ means “I am in full agreement of this statement and a lot of what you’ve said ticks a lot of boxes and has opened my eyes somewhat“
Excellent talk I hope more people understand the points Lucy is making and we can correct the current course we are on. From her book this quote rings so true for me: " We have become familiar with statistics about how common the problem is and hashtags encouraging us to open up to our friends. But this isn’t enough. For starters, this message to speak about our mental illness is only useful if there is help at the other end: if the person listening actually understands what the problem is. And we’re not there yet - very few people know how to respond to someone who is unwell. For all this drive to start talking, very few know how to listen; very few really know what it is they’re supposed to say." Foulkes, Lucy. What Mental Illness Really Is… (and what it isn’t) (p. 4). Random House. Kindle Edition.
There is no "we".
I first noticed this maybe ten years ago when I realized that people were integrating flippant self-diagnoses into their sense of identity. The biggest issue with identity integration by far is that once you've done something like this it's almost impossible to abandon. Diagnoses that were wrong or were meant to be for transient periods of distress become a permanent part of someone's self, even if the symptoms are long gone or never existed. I've worried since maybe 2016 that mental health awareness is driving mental health issues, and I've wondered ever since if anyone else has noticed or even cares.
It's especially wierd that most of these people insist mh problems they self-diagnose with don't cause any problems in their lives and if anyone says they cause problems they are "using it as an excuse."
I noticed. I was in high school, severely depressed & once it became a trend, I knew I couldn't seek help - it was a hurdle I pulled myself up and over on my own. In my mind, at that time, if I told anyone (even friends) they'd roll their eyes and assume I'm just jumping on this bandwagon like everyone else.... It closed doors for me, it didn't normalize anything, it generalized and assumed who I was and what I needed
I feel like there’s a small percentage of people that are now catching on, but like I said small percent. We are being conditioned by other mentally ill ppl to enable our bad behavior and habits just because it seems “relatable”
MH professional here. WE NOTICED, oh boy did we notice, and we have many many discussions about it, but what can you do. You just have to take it at face value. TBH is makes many of us want the quit the field because we spend so much time on worried well. Ironically most of the worried well will show up fully believing their experiences are unique and true illnesses that require an immediate diagnosis and often respond angrily when this is declined, even when interventions and support to try to resolve their actual difficulties are offered. We're at the point where people can not tell normal life experiences, ups and downs, reactions, bereavements, births, hormone changes, and ageing apart from identifiable illness because we provide a pervasive message that anything less than happiness or contentment is abnormal. We also encourage the idea that people and their communities (families, friends) cannot support each other without 'expert' instruction. Most people can resolve issues on their own with time, and changes in the situation that triggered the distress.
The evolution of public discourse on mental health, but the treatment of moderate cases remains a medical one rather than a community one (eg joining a gentle sport club, getting a coach, going to a retreat with professionals).
I wonder to what extent the use of medicalised language somehow facilitates an avoidance of the emotional distress that might be experienced as a problem/"mental health problem" but isn't in itself illness. Perhaps things would be easier if we were more ready to accept that life involves "dis-ease" - rather than everything being "a disease" Also wondering the extent to which a comparison with the way we talk about physical health could be useful here (- although tend not to want to reinforce a false binary). We have many physical health problems all the time - acid reflux, an injury. But we understand much better the line between temporary dis-ease and physical symptoms of certain magnitude persisting over time = an illness. For mental health, we jump to language of illnesses and diagnoses, which encroaches on those who need that language, as said. That point around using the language of experience and emotion (and validation - from self and others, and to others) is so key - but will need practice/change in the discourse.
Yes, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. What’s a disease or illness to start with? Diseases can of course be temporary but often, they are severe and even chronic. Perhaps we should make a distinction between disease, illness and disorder, or something of the sort. We need to be clearer on what it means to be indisposed temporarily versus chronically afflicted, so we can also become clearer about mental health labels. if you’re mentally ill, it would seem that you’re incurable. If you ‘only’ have a mental health problem, or even a disorder, it could possibly be cured. There is a vast difference there, the implications are huge. There are mental health related problems I have experienced myself that were ‘supposed’ to be chronic, but they weren’t. They were just mislabelled as something more serious than they really were. In actual fact, they were symptoms of a fluctuating physiological disease. I’ve been left wondering whether there was really anything ‘seriously’ mentally wrong with me to begin with. Clearly I don’t have mental disease but have suffered from mental fluctuations with some behavioural consequences. I feel grossly mislead by indiscriminating mental health professionals. I can see that I’ve had neurological issues that no one understood and therefore stamped quack diagnoses in my forehead.
Having developed a physical (but “invisible”) disabling condition decades ago, dealing with doctors who preferred to treat as depression .... who wouldn’t get a bit down once in a while? But experiencing an occasional case of “the blues” is a far cry from a huge basket of assorted “mental and personality disorders.” Those “experts” would know differently if they experienced my reality even for just a few months, never mind 2/3rds of their lives.
One of the main problems is that all of the professional literature is written and researched by normal people who describe how they experience the behavior of people with psychological disabilities. Not by people who actually suffer from psychological disabilities.
@@Thomas_Name kind of like the celebate priest that does marriage counseling...
@@savage22bolt32 lol. Shhh. Stating the obvious is tantamount to a cardinal sin.
Very enlightening, delicately done, and meticulously phrased to help steer us through this current mess! Thanks RI and Lucy for highlighting this emerging trend
I've never liked the R U OK campaign. because most people who are really bad won't talk to you, and it is a constant reminder that you are not OK and it just becomes who you are. I would prefer a What's One Thing I Can Help You With campaign. there's less negative talk, others aren't overwhelmed by the situation and are more likely to help, and sets people on a cycle of getting things done. or can stop one little problem turning into a big one. and promotes community collaboration.
Have you tried psilocybin?
Extremely insightful. Thank you!
I'd like a voice. Thank you Dr. Lucy Foulkes, more people needed to see this.
I can see the point she’s making, but let’s talk about spectrum. Say, I have corona and my symptoms are mild, runny nose for two days and that’s it. And let’s say my friend got corona and had to be hospitalized and nearly died. Two very different experiences. Doesn’t make my corona test any less positive though. I think the issue here is people throwing all these medical terms around when they haven’t been diagnosed by a professional.
Thank-you. Very well said.
We need to rise up against these mental health specialists. I am sick of being told that I have every mental disorder under the sun. Fight back.
Thank you for conveying this very valid analysis so carefully and clearly. It resonates with my experiences as a children's social worker and parent of teenagers in the climate you describe.
Thank you Lucy. Very thought-provoking. I agree that language and definition is very important in diagnosis as well as mental illness often becomes a kind of 'Top Trumps', having to inflate language (very suicidal) in order to feel that one is being taken seriously. I recently learned that the childhood trauma I suffered that I thought was PTSD in fact isn't, because I don't suffer flashbacks/nightmares. But my therapist told me that my trauma wasn't any less severe or distressing just because I presented differently. This has helped me greatly. I also agree that the language surrounding OCD needs to change as many don't see it for the debilitating disorder it can be. Anyway, thanks and I look forward to reading your book.
Have you tried psilocybin?
@@robbiebouchart1551 No, its not available here as a treatment and I don't know anyone who would offer it privately. Not something I would try alone, if LSD is anything to go by
I used to have daily chronic psychogenic pain from depression and it was incredibly frustrating to hear people talk about "oh I'm feeling depressed today" when I was going to school for years wondering if stabbing myself in the eye with a spoon would relieve the pain. People can't imagine how warped your thinking can get when you're feeling intense pain based on some thoughts you're having... You end up wanting to think and believe ANYTHING that just makes you feel less bad.
Very delicate and important issue to talk about. And I do also wonder about what can be done, like she said it's very hard to take the identity and label away from someone once they get validation and meaning to the struggles they face, however mild. Maybe that spectrum needs to change. Because it has a green part ,labeled "healthy" and all the others then can be viewed as levels of "unhealthy". I think it's quite clear everyone will face some issues with their lives that might make them feel bad. In a way, all of us are at least on the "coping" part, so maybe that's what the starting point should be, a part of the spectrum where problems are managed and dealt with, without need for professional help or disorder labels. I guess if more people realize they can cope with their problems, professional help can be better directed to those who really can't. To add a bit of my personal experience, I have been thinking a lot about this issue as I've noticed more and more of the people I meet have some sort of disorder. Like, an alarming number of them. It got me thinking exactly like that, they can't all be unwell. I have issues too, and I can say I am probably on the "coping" part of that spectrum. I actually feel I could easily slip into a more helpless bit, if it were not for the confidence that thinking about my own life brings me, that I can cope and deal with things. I want to just urge people, when they are struggling to deal with things, to be careful with labeling yourself so extremely, as it might rob you of the confidence necessary to cope, and bring you down a spiral of therapists and medications that may, instead of help you, just make you dependant and unfulfilled.
It's becoming politicized is THE problem
I don’t know what the opposite to mental illness stigma but it’s scary how we didn’t even notice the path across the spectrum until we arrived at the opposite end where mental illness has become a status symbol, a victim mentality or a pass to be a part of a group and find identity in labeling yourself as marginalised. But the most toxic thing is how young people completely identify as their diagnosis and assumes every personal quirk of theirs is connected to that label and then goes om tiktok and spread misinformation. I’m autistic and I don’t feel like it’s negative to embrace your neurodiversity but I’m also a person who has struggled with anorexia for almost 15 years and I refuse to make that my identity and I’m aware it’s a problem of mine and even though the world can be triggering I don demand of expect the world to accomodate to me regarding that, that would be delusional and it would not make me less anorexic. It scares me how people nowadays don’t even try to work on themselves and go straight to using their problem as an excuse or tool to manipulate people.
Brilliant presentation. Bravo.
Nuanced talk - needs more upvotes. It is easier to talk as if there are absolutes. Adverts and politicians do this as a matter of course - it makes the message more punchy, it makes it more persuasive. We need more awareness of the messy, blurry nature of things. We need acceptance that there are no firm dividing lines and defining such lines may be expedient but it doesn't reflect reality. Not sure that the spectrum should have been a series of chevrons since that implies that you always move along towards the red when quite clearly some people don't change colour and some wobble to and fro.
Excellent comment Andrew 🙌
Did she mention psilocybin? How can you talk about mental health without even mentioning the ground break research?. I down voted..
I feel like learning disabilities like ADHD and Dyslexia are very different than the mental ilnesses discussed here, but I relate to many of the sort of dissonances expressed in this video. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 5 when it was not considered to be common. I struggled with school, and had difficulties socialising with my peers. When I was a child it was very much treated as a pathology, and to varying degrees I was stigmatized by other children and their parents. Eventually I overcame some of these challenges through development of good habits, and I still take prescription stimulants. Over the last decade I've noticed an explosion in the amount people talking about ADHD and as well as memes about ADHD. People are almost celebrating their ADHD, posting incessantly about hyperfocus, and being spacy and disorganized. I should feel great right? But instead I just feel alienated, so many people with experiences very different than my own acting like that's "So ADHD". And when people make light of it or talk casually about it, it grates against me. I feel like my experience is trivialized. Theere was the time when I was 5 and my mom told me I had to take meds, and I protested "but I'm not sick", and she insisted that I was. Then there are countless times I've been asked "did you forget to take your meds" over all sorts of things, from just acting a little too giddy to having legitimate disagreements with people. Then there were the parents who told my friends to stop hanging out with me and cancelled playdates when they found out. Somebody who sailed through HS and college, and only just gets an ADHD diagnosis after struggling at work has had a profoundly different experience than I had (not to be confused with the people who always struggled and only find out as adults), as do children getting diagnosed today in a much more accepting environement. And the symptoms people talk about aren't even the same. For example, so many people talk about having ADHD and anxiety - these people definitely don't have what I have. When I stop my meds, my anxiety switches off, I'm literally too relaxed to get anything done, I need to take the meds in order to get worked up enough about the future to work towards any long term goals. I enjoy being off meds. My personal theory is that ADHD is a collection of different conditions, some of which are much more deviant from the norm than others, but which all share the common symptom - that a child can't sit still in class. I'm worried the way people talk about ADHD these days risks reifying certain things that shouldn't be. Just like with mental health people need to realize these things are a continuum, and literally anybody can experience occasional symptoms.
excellent talk on mental health, worth watching in full to get the full picture.
Excellent talk! I thoroughly agree, especially when it comes to teenagers. "You can't *all* be unwell." That remark is indeed something I have thought myself, word for word. "The concept of unhappiness is different now [...]" So true! "[...] the way we're encouraging people to talk and think about their mental health at the moment is actually making people feel worse." I think this is right on the money. It's like constantly asking someone if they feel itchy. I can't know if this is true, but I also wonder if the friendlier posture towards the behavior of mental illness is resulting in people to lose their distress tolerance, which in turn really does foster mental illnesses.
Public & corporate assumptions of mental health: Diagnosis = assumptions to minimize liability &/or predictable steps to "fix" the person towards a pigeon-holed personality "So how fast can you get back to work?" = needing pills, apps & wanting to have streamlined therapy sessions to get back the family's/jobs'/social status' limited schedule for the person with mental health.
I have put myself in mental hospitals to try to understand. Some of the finest people I have ever met. Patients and staff. Gotta filter. And be sweet to the gregs.
Thank you.
10:00 begins to list the issues
The first ten minutes is also good. 🙂
@@NOELTM Sure!
Excellent talk
This is a really great talk
I was on kidney dialysis for 17 years before getting a transplant (20 years ago now), I had no support at all to transition to my new state of being healthy. Maybe there should have been some support but I'm not sure about medicating people to feel happy is the right way forward. However, what it did do was build character in myself and the strength to face life challenges for example going back to University to study for a degree and many other things that I had to face, all without medication.
The youtuber medlife crisis has talked about a somewhat similar issue in term of physical health. The synopsis was that its generally a very bad idea to have unnecessary health checks as things may be picked up which were never an issue in the first place, which would end up being treated and the patient going through painful recovery, when the alternative is it sorts itself out or is just how that person's body works. I think what is going on now in terms of the mental health talks is the physiological equivalent of telling everyone to go on webmd and try find a symptom they have, and get as many health checks as possible. Much like you wouldn't give everyone who has a slight headache a brain biopsy, or someone with an achy knee surgery for fear their cartilage is worn away, as not only would that waste medical resources but also make others who genuinely need it out of luck, we shouldn't immediately jump to the idea that someone who is feeling low is clinically depressed.
I find two seemingly opposite poles are major contributor to this problem. Firstly, a totally unrealistic expectation of being ecstatically happy all day every day, never sad ever and that if you are even slightly unhappy for a moment, never mind deeply unhappy * but healthy * for a lengthy period, it means there is something extremely wrong with you, intrinsically, as a person. The 'opposite' pole that if you're slightly down for a moment, or a lot down, or extremely upset for a lengthy period, it should automatically be medicalised, treated as a serious psychiatric disorder which then becomes self-fulfilling prophecy via internalising the label. "I was or am struggling right now, this will go on my whole life, I've even got a label". One of the most disturbing trends I've ever seen in modern Psychiatry, is handing out antidepressants to those grieving the loss of a loved one. Humanity has coped with this happening for thousands upon thousands of years without needing a prescription. If I tried pushing Class A on someone to help them deal with such a loss, I'd rightfully be arrested and jailed for taking advantage of the vulnerable as well as the illegality of the act itself.
The video was enlightening. Mental health is such an important topic to be discussed.
The size of the in-person audience underlines the continuing stigma.
I’m with you!
Very well presented
Narcissism Personality Disorder is another terminology that I particularly dislike. These terms become weapons to insult rather than terms to develop understanding.
Malignant personality disorder is something normal people are defined by. Narscis-whatever does not doesn't exist. It is indeed an insult invented by malignant normaltrash and marketed into the realm of psychology. Disorders are made up by normal people to outcast people who suffer from psychological disabilities.
Antisocial personality disorder or cluster B personality type is all we need.
VERY relevant topic 🙏
Awareness has literally been suppressed - through active effort - by insurance companies, because mental health care is expensive and difficult to monetize. That's it, that's the whole reason.
Awesome channel with awesome content and great quality as always say 🌍💯
I don’t know if this is the same in the UK, but in the US, the only way most insurance companies will cover therapy is with a diagnosis. This leads to quick diagnoses and/or the idea that something has to be extremely wrong with them to get therapy. There are some ways around this for a time (diagnosing with adjustment disorder for a few months before insurance says “they aren’t sick enough to need continued therapy, we are not going to pay for this”).
We need to put money directly into peoples hands but the UK and the US use the first past the post voting system resulting in two dominant political parties that are extremely difficult to remove. Voting in a third party like The Forward Party in the US or The Liberal Party in the UK would result in voting reform and the introduction of a universal basic income.
Do you think there's a connection between the reports of the rise in mental health concerns and the increasing privatisation of mental health parts of the NHS? These private mental health companies will be keen to drive more traffic to their business and the confusion for the lay person in interpreting mental health will surely increase their customer base.
Your comment is touching a truth we intuit already. Look at how the Sacklers spent millions of dollars to redefine pain and bust the "myth of opioid abuse" to sell OxyContin. Capitalist incentives meet Healthcare/Pharma is the most toxic combo there is.
i think the big problem with mental health awareness is that people are tooo scared to make people fullyy aware of mental health because that would mean a lot of people would reealise tthat nearly all of the people of the UK population are mad!
I find some of this frustrating, especially in terms of this idea of a professional diagnosis as some kind of holy grail. The problem isn't that non-depressed, non-suicidal neurotypical people legitimately believe that they are depressed and suicidal and have OCD, the problem is that the stigma has just changed, it's gone from being something that you hide away to something to be joked about. I find it a little patronising this idea that most people can't tell their own emotions and know when it's out of balance or have suspicions about what is causing that lack of balance or understand that magnitude of their problems. Like she noted in Michelle Obama's speech thing she doesn't call it clinical depression, dhe calls it "low level" she understands that there is a distinction I guess the problem is that we don't have the language for the middle ground and bc of the high ground diagnosis is placed kn people feel like they need to use those terms to give their pain some gravity. Part of the problem is that honestly incredibly patronising attitude that we have no internal sense of our emotional well-being and can't have any kind of say in it. If you got into a car accident and ever since have had a deep anxiety about driving and cars and get panic sttacks over it, you can probably guess that what you're experiencing is PTSD. Yes, it isn't always that clear cut but it can be sometimes and I just don't love this idea that patients have to play dumb when they're the ones experiencing the symptoms. Part of the problem is also that professionals can often be dismissive particularly on the basis of age, ethnicity and gender (for example the underdiagnosing of adhd/autism in young girls & people of colour) and that makes diagnoses oftentimes inaccessible as well as high costs or long waiting lists. So what do you do then? If you're a young boy who's just be pressured into sex and are experiencing traumatic symptoms but you are aware of the stigma and the biases and you can't afford the diagnosis? Do you just continue to drag on and try to hold yourself together by might alone? What if you're autistic and a black girl who is significantly less likely to be diagnosed but the waiting lists are insanely long? Do you ignore the sensory hell of daily life until you can be diagnosed which might take years? There are many problems with the way that we talk about mental illness but we need to create a discourse that understands that doctors are not perfect and patients are not stupid, especially when it comes to disorders that are more common than not. I don't deny that there is a spectrum of wellness nor that there a problem with people casually using actual mental health conditions in casual ways nor am I arguing for patients to become armchair doctors I'm just wary of using thks reasoning as an excuse to dismiss legitimate concerns of people who are really struggling and who have done the research and the work and can tell with general accuracy what they are actually experiencing.
We don't dismiss the concerns, we just don't provide a diagnosis after a 30min consultation, and we don't 'diagnose natural and reasonable reactions to environmental stressors. The clinical definitions for things are very different to internal experiences and are based on the much more extreme variance, which over time has included ever-expanding moderate - milder forms. The problem is people often dont actually know what these terms mean or the actual symptoms that are grouped (10mins on TicTok makes that blatantly obvious), they hear it online or from a friend, or see a famous person have it, or its in the popular vernacular and they attribute that experience to the label. Or the people around them do some armchair diagnosing because they are showing behaviours that make the other person feel uncomfortable etc. Few modern MH professionals think a person is unable to determine that they are distressed, but most people coming into a clinic only come with a reference of one (their own experience) and a limited understanding of how diagnostic criteria work and are applied. Clinicians see a lot of distressed people in all sorts of presentations and causes. Over time they start to develop a sense of the difference between what is diagnosable and what isn't. This does not mean for one second that they do not recognise the person's experience of being distressed and certainly, in the UK we offer treatment without a need for diagnosis. Of course, I'm not saying all clinicians are gold standard or that we don't make mistakes, and it depends on specialisms etc. But I do take umbridge at insinuations that professionals are dismissive for the sake of being dismissive. We deal with 1,000s of presentations of distress over the course of a year, do you? We have professional team meetings of individuals with 20 years + of experience working with individuals who present with all sorts of presentation of distress, we check with colleagues (clinical supervision, we seek second opinions, we do joined assessments). We can review medical records, we can see trends and patterns in our data. Both your examples could and would be offered treatment, and we wouldn't need a diagnosis to do it.
Seems to me that any calibration of language difference would have to be done by the local doctor of individuals hometown. Or nearest to . If possible.
Perhaps 'mental diet' can be a term used also. Thanks for sharing
I suppose a lot of my experience is dated now, but I've met a lot of people who've seemed so clearly suffering at a way that needs medical attention and they've ended the conversation saying "maybe this is just normal life, just how it is fore everyone" and walked away. And there are (or were) a lot of people "in the yellow" who insist they're coping when it's clear from the outside that they're getting worse and worse. I worry that with this idea that there's too much exaggeration or over-use going on (which there probably is) that it will reinforce those things that stop people looking for help. A lot of the conversation is naive, but I think people push each other both ways. Of course there's this hypochondria in the commentariat, but hasn't there always been in one form or another? I'm not sure that commentators are as influential as other commentators think they are. I've met way more ill people who are trying to be well than the other way around. But my experience mainly is from a decade before even the speaker's, so maybe I'm just out of date. And I guess much of it has been unduly skewed towards men talking.
What are some good exercises/practices/habits to maintain good mental health. I.e., prevent mental health problems?
Pet a dog A hot shower Sunlight for 30 minutes minimum. Your favourite music for 30 minutes minimum. And of course, the ultimate cure: a good 7-8 hr sleep.
'Extreme' is a subjective term... When I was having three anxiety attacks a week it was an altogether different experience from just being trapped in the experience of anxiety. So by comparison to my baseline experiences of usual anxiety I considered it extreme. It does not count as 'extreme mental illness' in that sense. But this is because the subjective category of intensity fits the sense of the experience. Whereas those words are selected academically for distinguishing purposes. But unlike a term like good which carries historical gravitas, the word extreme has no special ornunique subject. That is to say, any kind of a thing can be extreme. So given a newer convention or ontology, the subjective term still carries its subjective explanatory weight.
Though...The most extreme cold is absolute cold... But we would say 'extremely cold' at -70 C. So there is an objective and subjective extreme per subject with a spectrum. So I would just assert we do not know the spectrum.
Psychiatry is at such a state of infancy that it seems to me that sending someone to a modern specialist is like recommending to an injured medieval carpenter that he seek urgent medical help involving a manure poultice and an urgent blood letting.
@@SofaKingShit You don't have to like it but my experience with public services included a lot of problems since childhood. So if you cannot understand the mark of those challenges as anything other than a personality disorder I would suggest you are biased or lacking empathy yourself.
Hi, It s a really interesting topic. Do you really think that we need to label everything? People are identifying a lot with labels . I was depressed for a short time (couldn't eat and had really black ideas) I read the book of eckhart tolle the power of now. It s help me a lot. If you can feel what he trie to explain in his book and combine this with your work, it would help a lot of peoples . I wish you all the best .
A fourth possibility to why prescriptions of antidepressants have doubled has to be the fact that medication has become first line treatment and is offered basically right away as you seek treatment. At least this is where it’s at here in Sweden. This is because the demand for help is way bigger than the supply and psychiatrists are few and has almost completely stopped doing talk therapy and only do diagnostics and stuff.
Here here
I struggle with the notion that others are always to blame or responsible. Society as a whole, is a difficult enterprise. How and from where must perpetual help come from? Most people suffer from something, not just mental health. I'm not sure how humanity will ever get rid of suffering.
As explained in the video some things make it worse. It's not about perpetual help and more about not doing things which are known to make it worse.
With many of these conditions it seems like genetics determines how much of a stress you need to develop problems (the 'diathesis' model). It could be that people highly genetically predisposed to PTSD (twin and adoption studies shockingly report higher than 0.5 heritability for that condition) could actually "get ptsd" (be in the red area) from a partner cheating on them. While others genetically predisposed to not "get it" might be fine with being in combat (most people who serve in combat don't "get PTSD"). Similar for depression, etc.
Everyone in combat gets some form of post-traumatic stress, if only the temporary depersonalization and time dilation that is protective. It is only a disorder when it persists. But there are ways to provoke it in anyone, using sleep deprivation and trauma. There is cheating and then there is cheating. Remember Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight? Or, suppose your 54-year-old partner cheats with an 18-year-old? And your youngest child is 27?
Really insightful analysis this, lots of food for thought. One thing this reminds me of is a deeper issue with the medical concept of problems of thinking, feeling and behaviour. One of the key critiques of psychiatry generally is that symptoms are synonymous with the disorders. With "regular" disease, actual biological mechanisms can be identified, and the symptoms are indeed symptoms, they point in the direction of the actual underlying issues. But with psychiatric disorders, the disorders are actually groupings of symptoms. So from that perspective, it's perhaps not shocking to see such disorders skyrocketing in prevalence.
I feel like, even if you give someone the diagram and say that they should fall somewhere on there that most people only have their own experiences to judge with. People could very easily over or under inflate what they're experiencing even if they have the proper information especially when you include outside influences like you suggested with celebrities coming out has struggling with these mental issues. If you only have yourself to compare with, you could very easily feel like if you said you were only in the green or yellow area that that would be undervaluing yourself somehow. People might get defensive with "Well I think what I'm going through is difficult" and even if you explain that you're still trying to justify that they're going to answer that what they're going through is akin to the orange or even higher (although it's easier to argue that it's not affecting them as much as they say the more they exaggerate). People's feelings are going to get in the way of achieving more accurate results. This one is particularly bad because those people could actually be struggling so even if you catch that they're lying and decide not to overdiagnose them, you could accidentally dismiss them entirely or prescribe them with that one mental condition where people overdiagnose themselves (I vaguely remember there being something like that in the holy bible of mental disorders). Equally so, there are a lot of people who've been conditioned that what they feel and experience doesn't matter and thus they should stay quiet. They might see their experiences as universal when actually they're stuck very neatly in that red zone. Again, the more exaggerated, the harder it is to hide but both still pose real problems. I suppose this is covered by the point in the conclusion where you're saying we should demonstrate what the red end of the spectrum looks like to help people distinguish that what their experiencing isn't being belittled we just want to help those people. And to demonstrate to people who think what they're feeling is normal could in fact be something they don't have to struggle through alone. The only problem is that this may make it harder for yellow or orange people to speak out because they aren't green but they can recognize they aren't quite at a red. It's all a bit of a tangled mess.
Is the mic too good? It feels like ASMR the whole time.
I thought that it goes without saying that in a hyper-competitive, class-ridden society, you must be prudent about who you talk to about any health issue whatsoever. It is ordinary for people to use cancer against another person to squeeze them out of a job -- or at least it is in the US, where medical insurance is a private market. Most people are not your friend. So? As long as you know, you won't suffer disillusionment.
Surely gatekeeping or means testing anyone's right to expresses or understand some part of themselves as being anywhere on any part of any spectrum is also problematic? no? I fear the process of encouraging people to _think and talk more about mental health_ and developing a robust etiquette _with which they are permitted to do so_ is going to be another of these 'conversations' that never feels like it's really achieving anything so much as doing my bleedin 'ead in.
@@mini1293blue I think you misunderstood some parts of her lecture. She isn't blaming the tools. She's speaking about - the blurry and ambiguous distinctions in mental health. It's a spectrum and not a binary. Where you fall on this spectrum is ascertained through questionnaires & surveys. - the distinction she IS making is between quotidian feelings of everyday anxiety and tension and stress vs. in her words "If you have a certain no. of symptoms, for a certain period of time, and it causes this amount of distress, then we're going to say you have depression or anxiety disorder, etc." People using psychiatric language to describe negative emotions or everyday blues, is diluting the importance and meaning of those words for people who're truly suffering and need help.
It's interesting how many times she had to tell the audience that she and her information is not meant to be threatening. Are we all that fearful?
dear royal institution ! would you like to address a clinically diagnosed as paranoid personality disorder ppd that is suffering me for more than a decade and it's said that ppd can only be controlled through medication .
If you look for a problem, your more likely to find it.
Yes, exactly. Much better to look for problems, so they may be dealt with before they become worse. Rather than hoping any problem will just go away if you ignore it.
I wish the audio quality wasn't so terrible.
While i agree with most of your observations, i think you misstate mr Morgan's position. His observation is that there are some people on the completely green side of the spectrum, who nonetheless pretend to have problems. Now whether we can measure whether a given person is a person like that is a question. Sometimes we can't. But sometimes we can. Sometimes it does get ridiculous and then it devalues the problems of people who are really have them - the point which you yourself raised.
Hii sir
Why is the go to treatment for mental health always pharmaceuticals?
Legalise and treat people with psilocybin.. 80% successful against treatment resistant depression. I'm personally one of the cured
I am from India
Helloji
@@stephena1196 Hello
I think spoiled rain droplets who are amess throw around the label of being from India too freely these days. I will tell you something that I am saying for your own good: You are not from India.
Whats gone wrong suggests that at one point its been right. It never has, it still relies on a pretty useless diagnostic system, interventions rarely work or cause harm and the professionals in many cases are more damaged than the patients. Glad I left when I did.
This is not a 'problem' so much as the natural evolution of language and societal views on disease. There was a time when 'nostalgia' was a formally recognised disease but anymore. People also once thought that homosexuality was a disorder but not anymore. Definitions of diseases and disorders changes depending on societal expectations. The mental health awareness campaigns has succeeded in doing this by lowering the threshold of help-seeking through language. She is right to say that there is no clear 'cut off' between what is considered a normal human experience and what is considered a disorder, simple because everybody's experiences and expectations are different. If we take that to its logical conclusion, we have to believe that either everybody is depressed or nobody is. And therein lies the problem - people can fall into either one camp or the other which misses the point. At the end of the day, there's no way to measure depression (or any mental illness) objectively thus we can only rely on our senses which are prone to manipulation and bias. But as long as we make improving quality of life our main focus, it really doesn't matter if one believes he has or hasn't got depression. If there is something bothering you, and you can't fix it on your own, seek help. It may not be a perfect solution (I admit), but it is the most pragmatic.
We could very easily change the tax system and give everyone over eighteen a universal unconditional basic income tax free for life which would improve everyone's mental health by reducing stress.
@@higreentj Yes, easily. Very easily.
The problem is that, repeatedly telling everyone they have depression might actually reinforce the belief that they are depressed and make people feel worse than they would have otherwise. This seems to be the real issue she's trying to address in this talk
As others have said and I'd like to echo. Unless you're a qualified Dr to be able to diagnose x,y,z conditions, then don't even try. Example: I have lump, and before I know it I end up on a page via a Google search that according to my (self inferred) symptoms it's cancer, and I have 3 months to live. Extreme example, sure, but you get the gist. Same difference with trying to self diagnose ANY mental health condition. You CAN NOT do it. You don't have ALL the information, all you have are a few terms that seem to agree with what you feel. OCD is a classic throw away comment by people who have zero idea about how distressing to actually have OCD is. It's not about silly little things, such as how you organise stuff.
We need to adopt a social model instead of, or at the *very least* alongside, the pathological one
... I think we should better address the technical issues causing mental trouble to these people... ... there are lots of people in a parallel world, which are not noticeable, but still encounter severe mental problems, which are of a greater importance in my opinion, because the phenomenon remains in the role of a ghost ...
18:01 You call michelle out of using the phrase "low grade depression" when she doesn't have a disorder but you yourself just said that there's differen't levels of all these things and they sometimes can fall short of a full-blown disorder
Metal health needs to been recognised just like any other illness. If you break a leg. You get it put in a cast and everyone can see that you have been injured. We need to get rid of the stigma associated with being mentally ill. Treat ALL people with decency and respect.
She has a good point but I grew up in a time when you didn't talk about it, at all. I can see getting caught up in it thinking their something wrong with you. But most people will figure it out. It is a start.
To start with, let's agree that the word "mental health" is not at all appropriate. It should in almost all cases (except alzheimers, etc. where MENTAL executive faculties are impaired), be replaced with the term "emotional health." Think about that for a while.
I'll let you in on a tragic mental health story from Ontario, Canada. A woman i know that has been diagnosed with being bi-polar claims she was physically and sexually assaulted by her psychiatrist. Her hand was smashed and mangled by that person. All in the name of therapy for a condition which she has no control over. These stories are never given any credibility due to the patient having a mental disorder. If we can't trust the ones put in place to help, how can these people get better?
Well, everything that works gets banned seemingly.
Communication is restorative. A depressive patient will see a problem in everything, in life itself, in the name of her illness, or in the neighbor's face. That is not a problem that cannot be solved with good therapy, good communication. Changing the name of things can be much more damaging due to dishonesty. Do not bother. I am not a professional in psychology.
This is an interesting lecture given by Lucy in a sad voice and body language, with obsession with evidence of the present evolving situation, from 2008( only the last 14 years). What was happening in her life up to her decline in mental health. A classic case of Shifting Base Syndrome- believing the solutions can be found using 2008 as the starting point. The historical account of her earlier life should have taken into account such things as sympathetic formal education by predominantly female teaching, and a tough love education which has been shown to improve anger management in young children. It is a much more complex issue which relies on early confident conversations between parents and their children. Parenting Skills, including language skills are essential for a child’s first teachers.
We are not going wrong with awareness, we are failing to provide access to care
My mental health is suffering right now from all the lip smacking. Do no speakers get any coaching these days? It's everywhere.
That was all then. I found her delightful.
this channel is going the way of TED i see
Why so less audience? Looks like mental health is not a priority for most of us.
There is still a stigma associated with mental health. Probably all the people in the audience have a job related to mental health and included no interested lay people. Least they be recognised in the audience: an employer may be dissuaded from promoting them, or a narcissist mark them as a potential target for gaslighting.
Awareness is a bit of a pointless thing. Promoting awareness really does very little to help folks suffering from mental illness. It's like the FB statuses people share...
if you ever lived in a country with low awareness you know it really makes a different, it's a start but not the solution
@@oldcowbb i live in a country where awareness is high and so is mental health issues. We need to try and spend a lot more effort addressing the causes.
Is anybody else irritated by the many empty seats in this public lecture?
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there is a serious case of unintentional asmr taking place here, gentlemen.
On the subject of social awareness of mental health the main problem is the self-centeredness of normal people. Normaltrash only ever take problems they think they might be in danger of being affected by seriously. Racism, poverty, religious oppression, violence against groups... These are all things that receive serious attention in media because they affect organized groups and normal people recognize they could affect them too. They know that they will never develop psychological disabilities and therefore people who suffer from psychological disabilities are a joke and an inconvenience to them. The only way this will be overcome is when multiple people with psychological disabilities will recognize the affect it has on their lives and work together to overcome the problem.
I would to look to Robert Sapolsky. Why zebras don't get ulcers.
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I can feel your anxiety. You did a great job though.
Am I the only one who doesn't understand the point she's making? Maybe I haven't seen the things she's talking about as much?
Insults involving mental health should be met with the same violent reaction as other forms of discrimination. Instead, malignant cowards who look down on people with psychological disabilities have fun using these kinds of remarks to casually humiliate and perpetuate the poisonous nature of an evil spoiled/lazy society.
Society no longer considers such trifles as mental health and well being to be worthwhile issues. Blackness, trans-ness, now those are the real issues that make reality tick.
Feeling down, oh can't get enough money, here take this pill.