October is mental health month, and data released in September told us that are more than 4,000 children currently on the waiting list for child and adolescent mental health services. The number waiting more than a year to be seen is on the rise.
September news stories brought an increase in media reports of children’s lives being taken or put in danger. Rising prices and the concerns around the higher cost-of-living affect everyone, not necessarily equally but everyone will spend more. That lowest common denominator allows us to see it as a shared problem and nudges us towards support and solidarity. Unhelpful analysis trying to figure out the winners and losers in the budget, for example, separates us and brings an air of competition to something extremely serious. For us all.
And yet this is now a trend which risks becoming the norm before we know it. Unless we pause and take a cold hard look at the patterns which are emerging in homes, schools and in society, we risk remaining oblivious to what we are teaching young people until it is too late to reverse the damage. Membership of the school classroom expires at approximately the age of 18, assuming one has not unsubscribed earlier.
Children model what they see and hear, and so the need to be on a side, to be right or wrong, becomes ingrained at an early age
Cliché or not, life itself is the ultimate classroom and learning experience, and the expiry date isn’t within our lifetime. While we are all focusing on systemic reforms, eg Leaving Cert, we lose sight of crucial lessons in the bigger picture. Children aren’t only learning while in school, and with increasing numbers missing school for mental health reasons we must dare to examine the broader picture of what young lives — and minds — are being exposed to.
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One thing I have been observing closely is the motorist vs cyclist discourse, another example of an apparent need to widen the gap between us. Too few who comment allow space for an alternative perspective. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are unaware of it, they may in fact be very open to it but if that isn’t out there as part of their comment in the public discourse, how are we to know? Binary conversations are the sword on which society is falling and our mental health is failing.
Life’s classroom is in overdrive in a car where the adult driver complains about how inconsiderate the cyclist is of motorists. And at the meal table where the cyclist laments the dominance of vehicles and the ruthlessness of their drivers. When did it stop becoming about road safety for all? Are cyclists and motorists not collaborators on ensuring that they themselves get from A to B as efficiently and safely as possible?
When it comes to mental health and the direction we all seem to be going in, it is time for a courageous look at how we might be contributing to the decline in both our own mental health and that of others
As these arguments and debates escalate so do heart rates and blood pressure. Nervous systems register the impact as we desperately try to get another party to change their behaviour. And as we struggle in vain to control what is beyond our control, we sense failure. We start to become anxious, perhaps even to panic. The journey to work or school is a daily occurrence and it becomes synonymous with frustration and anger. Every day too many children travel to school exposed to the physical dangers on the road and the mental stressors in the car with them.
Children model what they see and hear, and so the need to be on a side, to be right or wrong, becomes ingrained at an early age. They learn to master the art of the binary conversation, but only in imitation. They do not develop the accompanying thinking skills required to defend a position and so find themselves out of their depth very quickly. It’s both tragic and ironic that this same lack of critical thinking skills is what prevents many young people from seeing the need to have a rationale behind their views. Let alone being able to articulate it. Without any of this the mental muscle is being repeatedly deprived of what it most needs in order to strengthen.
In an entirely different context Bishop Desmond Tutu once said: “There comes a point where we need to stop pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” When it comes to mental health and the direction we all seem to be going in, it is time for a courageous look at how we might be contributing to the decline in both our own mental health and that of others. A look that is devoid of blame, both of the self and of others. Taking that time will bring awareness, which is the first essential step in any change-making.
In an ever-encroaching world we are probably all starved of the quiet this thinking requires and so this won’t be nearly as simple as it might seem. It is, however, a huge opportunity for the classroom of life to achieve something huge. It offers society a common project on which to truly connect and do something meaningful. Measuring success will be the easy part — we have any number of statistics we wish to change and when those trends start to reverse we will know it is working.
You may say that we are already awash with mental health awareness initiatives and charities and I would tell you I already know that. They are the ones busy pulling people out of the river — I’m suggesting we let them do that while we take ourselves upriver and see what we can do about lowering the number falling in. Each of us can start this work in our own immediate context by recognising that mental health awareness matters every month — and every day.
