The wonderful thing about language is how it’s always changing. That’s the scary thing about it, too.
Sometimes these changes can be completely accidental. If you saw the word ‘twitter’ a few decades ago you’d have pictured a sweet little bird sounding happy. Then some clever Silicon Valley types hijacked it and now a ‘tweet’ might be happy — or, more likely, pretty savage.
Either way it’s a useful illustration of how innocuous words can be captured, sometimes for commercial gain, but more often by campaigners for a particular cause.
‘Gay’ is the perfect example of that.
It’s more than fifty years since young homosexual men began to use it to describe themselves. Now it’s rare to hear ‘homosexual’ used in common parlance. ‘Gay’ has taken over. This has made it a formidable weapon in the fight for equality. It has made our society more healthy.
But let’s try another phrase that’s been steadily creeping into common usage — a phrase that was almost never used when I was a youngster: mental health.
Go back only a few decades and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone using it outside the closed circle of medical professionals.
It was barely whispered when it did occur. Like there was some shame in suffering from mental health problems.
It is now ubiquitous. Even schoolchildren use it. Or should I say schoolchildren?
JOHN HUMPHRYS – ‘Sometimes, the changes in vocabulary are completely innocent. If you saw the word ‘twitter’ a few decades ago you’d have pictured a sweet little bird sounding happy. Then some clever Silicon Valley types hijacked it and now a ‘tweet’ might be happy — or, more likely, pretty savage.’
It is impossible to read or hear any interview with teenagers now about the effect of lockdowns on them — whether they’ve been at school or university — without either interviewer or teenager referring to the effect on their ‘mental health’.
Why not? Wasn’t it always ridiculous that we used to lower our voices and look the other way? It was as if it were something to be ashamed.
Surely we should welcome the way everyone is talking now about their ‘mental health’. Everyone is meant when I use the word “everyone”.
From Prince William, who has just welcomed an unprecedented agreement by the emergency services to adopt a package of ‘mental health support’ for their staff, to the boss of one of Britain’s biggest digital banks.
He’s Mark Mullen, the chief executive of Atom Bank, and he’s just announced that his staff are being shifted to a four-day week to improve their ‘mental and physical wellbeing’.
This is much more than puzzling. It is a sign that we should be worried about our recent obsession with mental wellbeing.
Do we really believe that five days a week of work is bad?
Speaking for myself, I’d hate to work in a bank for five days a year let alone five days a week, which is just as well because I’d be useless at it. Actually, I hate working in office offices.
But I’ve been lucky. My eccentric style as a freelance journalist has been a great fit for me.
However, we know many people who love the structure of a 5-day week. This gives their lives structure. They look forward to the weekends but enjoy the company of their colleagues when they’re at work, too.
They are now wondering what will happen to them when their bosses promise them an additional day at home, regardless of whether or not they want it. But what if they decide that four days a week is not enough for their mental health and want to take it easy? Maybe three days? It doesn’t end there.
But what do we actually mean by mental health?
Surely we should welcome the way everyone is talking now about their ‘mental health’. Everyone is meant to be understood when I use the term “everyone”. From Prince William, who has just welcomed an unprecedented agreement by the emergency services to adopt a package of ‘mental health support’ for their staff, to the boss of one of Britain’s biggest digital banks (pictured: Prince William speaks at the Royal Foundation’s Emergency Services Mental Health Symposium in London on November 25, 2021)
The country is not known for its mental illnesses.
We were the first in Europe to open so-called ‘lunatic asylums’. This was 700 years ago.
We finally ended up closing them in the 1980s. The inhumane practice of segregating people into two groups: the insane and those of normal mental health took time.
We are now able to recognize the fact that mental illness can be a cause of great unhappiness and suffering. We have begun to be more careful in how we approach it.
It is now possible to distinguish between mental disorders that share little or no commonality, such as depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.
However, it has been difficult to forget that there is a second category of human beings: the mentally ill and the healthy.
It is still difficult to accept the fact that everyone can be affected by mental illness. Our bodies and our minds are interconnected, as medical science shows. Psychosomatic illnesses are a real thing. Although it may be manifested in physical form, its causes can often be mental.
We realise too that just as the body can take only so much physical stress before something gives — the heart, our lungs, our limbs — so our minds can take only so much mental stress.
And we know that if we are subjected to too much anxiety or pressure from over-work we might suffer from what an earlier generation recognised as a ‘mental breakdown’.
JOHN HUMPRHYS: ‘We realise that just as the body can take only so much physical stress before something gives — the heart, our lungs, our limbs — so our minds can take only so much mental stress. We also know that overworked or anxious people can suffer from what an older generation called a mental collapse.
This happened to me once when my dad didn’t have the money to buy decent food for his family. No one was interested. The other side was not looking. He was better.
Is it true that less work leads to better mental health? Are four days a better option than five?
I worry that there’s something more sinister going on here. It is true that there are strong vested interests outlining the belief that all of us should be concerned about our mental well-being.
I’m not talking about the growing army of therapists and counsellors. Although some may not have the right training, there are many who can help vulnerable individuals with a compassionate ear. A trained, experienced therapist is often able to help people in greatest need.
It’s Big Pharma we need to worry about.
It’s not all. AstraZeneca and other companies are our greatest debt. Without their vaccines we’d still be counting our daily Covid dead in the thousands.
It’s those who peddle drugs knowing full well the effect they will have on their victims and caring not a jot about the massive harm they may be causing.
It’s medicalising a condition when it may or may not be clinically justified. It’s creating a market to treat ‘mental health issues’ in order to make money — vast amounts of money.
Although we may only be dimly aware that the United States is suffering from an opioid crisis, it’s something we need to take very seriously.
American drug firms assured doctors that the painkillers opioids were safe and not addictive in the Nineties. They were lying.
JOHN HUMPRHYS: Is it true that less work leads to better mental health? A four-day work week is better than five. I worry that there’s something more sinister going on here. It is true that there are strong vested interests outlining the belief that all of us should be concerned about our mental well-being.
Overdose caused the death of over 70,000 people in 2019 A breath-taking 10 million people ‘misused’ opioid prescription drugs.
Such drugs create dependency. Anyone in doubt should review the convincing column Sarah Vine wrote just a few weeks ago.
Her response was to an announcement by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence that it had issued new guidelines for doctors considering prescribing antidepressants.
NICE advised them to first explore other therapies, such as meditation and exercise.
Sarah was one of many people who were prescribed antidepressants. She took them for nearly ten years — and they worked. When she realized that she was becoming dependent upon them, she attempted to free herself. The real horror began when she realized that her dependence on them was too great.
Her hellish experience should be noted by all those who trot out that grotesquely overused expression ‘mental health issues’.
It is important to note that anti-depressants are being prescribed at an alarming rate in England. Well over seven million. Even more alarming is the fact that 25% of these children are between five and sixteen years old.
Is it possible for life to be so difficult today for children than it was in the past? The only way out is to take the dangerous journey that could lead to addiction to drugs.
The question is certain to be answered.