Last week, I linked to an article and discussed the importance of mental health care in UK primary schools.
Today, I wanted to follow up on that with a couple of links to articles that talk about this same problem in the US, and the importance of getting help early.
Adolescent Depression: Early Mental Health Services Are Key
We need to provide better mental health treatment in schools. Here’s how to start.
The experiment was a simple one. Take two small girls and put them, apparently, by themselves in a large shopping area, looking lost and confused, and see who stops to help them. The results left the experimenters stunned, but I don’t know why they would be. We have absolutely reached a point where showing interest…
“As a nation, Pakistan has not paid nearly enough attention to dealing with the issue. Meanwhile, thousands of innocent lives have fallen prey to various types of abuse — including physical, psychological and even sexual.” It’s true of most countries, but it seems as if Pakistan is seeing the effects of not paying attention to…
People with depression are less likely to report thriving regarding mental well-being 10 years later, but 10% of them do anyway.
Only 21% of people not diagnosed with depression reported thriving regarding their mental well-being, so it’s not like most people are living at that point anyway, for various reasons. Being diagnosed with depression doesn’t automatically make it impossible for you to recover and thrive. It’s just a bit harder.
More importantly, the article below talks about 67% of the people diagnosed with depression reporting no symptoms of it 10 years later.
People do recover from mental health issues. They can get better. It happens. Some even meet the criteria for mental well-being that only 21% of the world meets.
I will admit, in healthcare, these two types of narrative incoherence could cause a problem. How would a medical professional move forward with a diagnosis when our response to the first question is to dump an overwhelming amount of possibly relevant, possibly not, information, or to dismiss any symptoms? It really would be difficult to know. We know that the folks who get to the quickest, and best, healthcare are the ones who come in with details like what is wrong, how long it’s been going on, what happened previously to an illness or injury, etc. Trauma survivors typically struggle with exactly that.
This is only one way where not being able to tell a story in a coherent, effective, way hurts survivors. It blocks us from legal proceedings, as I said before, and it blocks us from being understood by those closest to us quite often. So, if you really want to connect with others, and maybe get better healthcare, learn to tell stories. That’s how the world communicates. But, if you’re confronted with someone who is struggling to tell a coherent story, consider what kind of trauma they may be dealing with, and have a little patience.
