Mental health is about people, not just concepts.

**This post has been sat in my drafts for a while now. I’ve been back and forth on whether or not to post it. It was supposed to be published the day after World Mental Health Day back in early October. Now it’s Mental Health Month, so I’m revisiting it. It’s been written and rewritten quite a few times… and shortened quite a lot. I really hope it serves a good purpose!**

Trigger warning: Contains discussion about clinical Depression and Anxiety. Uses the word ‘clinical’ a lot.

Reader’s digest: Please care about mental health – It’s essential! But even more than that care for and about the people who struggle with poor mental health. We need to pick our battles well, our enemies carefully, and make our challenges within the scope of our often limited understanding.

*

About three years ago I received an email from somebody who was very upset that I used the word ‘depressing’ on a tweet. My tweet said:

“I wish auto-correct would stop changing the word ‘ministry’ to ‘misery’. It’s getting depressing.”

I was told that by using the word depressing in this context, it was ‘detrimental to those living with mental health illness’, and that this ‘feeds into the lack of seriousness people have about mental health.’ I was told the word was unhelpful and inappropriate and should have been replaced by something like ‘disheartening.’ I think they were trying to tell me that the word ‘depressing’ should be reserved exclusively for talking about clinical Depression.

I took the tweet down.

I was upset by the email but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. It’s a few years later now and I think I’m better able to articulate what is was that actually bothered me. A couple of things have changed for me. Firstly, I’ve taken some credited Mental Heath training, and secondly, I received my own clinical diagnosis.

So, auto-correct kept changing ‘ministry’ to ‘misery’. It’s darkly funny, but I really did find that depressing. I was using the word correctly to describe my experience. Little was the person who emailed me to know but I have my own poor mental health journey. I have Generalised Anxiety Disorder (or GAD) which does, fore me, present symptoms of depression. And as a minister, seeing auto-correct constantly changing my life calling to misery really was a problem. It really was depressing. That’s not that weird, right?

I feel like the possibility of something like this should have crossed the person’s mind, or they should have asked a question or two before tooling up for a fight.

Are “depressing” and “Depression” the same thing?

The suggestion in the original email I was sent was that you should only ever use the word ‘depressing’ to refer to those suffering from clinical Depression. This is just wrong.

Now, all of us are different, and I’m sure there are people with clinical Depression who are triggered by any version of that word. We should be sensitive to these people as we meet them! However, in my experience, it’s much more upsetting for people to have their conditions diluted by triviality or cast aside by false heroics.

‘Depressing’ is not a clinical word that we borrow from. It’s not like saying ‘I feel autistic’ or ‘I feel cancerous’. It’s reasonable to feel genuinely, even deeply, depressed by something, share that you’re feeling depressed (in fact you should), and still not have clinical Depression.

All of us can suffer depression at times for various reasons, and it’s important to be both able and allowed to articulate that experience. You can be depressed – even seriously – without having clinical Depression. One doesn’t equal the other all the time. But you still need help and support. It’s also reasonable to feel anxious, without having clinical Anxiety, or to be peopled-out, without being a clinical Sociopath.

Cutting down these distinctions between an adjective and a clinical noun can actually cause some real problems. Not allowing the adjective its own room to breath, for instance, can actually trivialise those with a clinical diagnosis. Sometimes I’m anxious, rationally and understandably, and other times I experience symptoms of my Anxiety. One might be part of the other, but they’re not the same.

Coming back to clinical Depression, it’s a genetic dysfunction in the brain’s mechanism to regulate its mood. Most people feel depressed at times, but Depression is clinical in very specific ways. The Mayo Clinic identifies the causes of Depression as ‘biological differences’, with ‘physical changes in [clinically Depressed people’s] brains’ as well as ‘changes in the function and effect of… neurotransmitters and how they interact with neurocircuits involved in maintaining mood stability.’ You can be neurotypical and still suffer deep feelings of anxiety and depression, but without being clinically Anxious or Depressed. (If these feelings persist or effect your day-to-day life, however, then it is important to see a doctor!)

But there’s more. Limiting any form of the word ‘depressing’ to talk about clinically diagnosed Depression actually disables it as diagnostic tool. A Depression diagnosis is put together by depression events and triggers. Doctors ask questions like ‘how often do you feel depressed?’ ‘How disabling do you find depressing feelings?’ ‘What brings on these depressing feelings?’ Doctors use questions like these, in part, to distinguish between types of depression, as well as deciding between clinical Depression or something that is not Depression – such as other stress or trauma related struggles. All of which require different help and treatment. On the flip side of that, making ‘depressing’ and ‘Depression’ the same thing, elevates natural (and rational) human emotions into a potential self-diagnosis free-for-all.

Where does this leave us?

The original email caused the very thing that they were concerned about. I was hurt, triggered, and I felt increasingly alone, isolated, misunderstood, and rejected as a result. They felt I was trivialising mental health. I think they were.

This, in part, set me up for a long term fail. I have hardly ever since then posted anything about mental health. It cheapened my experience and undermined my condition. It is part of the reason why I rarely talk to people about it now.

I feel that, if you’re not an expert, then you should be very cautious with exactly these kinds of pronouncements and challenges, however well-meaning they might be. Even experts hold back on that kind of chastisement until they properly understand the situation. I also feel like you should be incredibly careful when challenging something as vague as my tweet was without asking questions first.

So maybe this is a careful challenge of my own. Please pick your battles well, your enemies carefully, and make your challenges within the scope of your understanding. And if in doubt, lead with compassion.

Caring about mental health is not enough, we need to care for the people who suffer from poor mental health.

Phew. That’s it from me.

Photo by whoislimos on Unsplash