Not everyone has the same cultural background when it comes to treating mental health, and that can create a hurdle that is different than the hurdles we all face in dealing with our mental health. This post tries to acknowledge that and provide reading recommendations from some of those cultures.
The question isn’t just about making therapy available to more people, though that is important. It’s also about eliminating the environmental factors that cause harm to our mental health. Those will vary depending on where we live. What works in Louisiana is not what works in New York. What is needed here is different because the environment is different.
Most of all, can we even see the issues as they apply to different places? If we can’t see that, how do we see the problems faced by any individual?
It was worth it, though. Stephanie is correct; if you don’t define yourself, other people will. It happened as a child to many of us when an abuser defined us as someone whom they could abuse; we took that lesson to heart and allowed others to keep defining us repeatedly. Some of those people may have wanted to help, some likely didn’t. It doesn’t matter. The only person who has the right to define you is you.
Navigating the online world takes some skill, but getting it right can provide significant benefits to our sense of belonging, community, and act as a decent accessory to our offline relationships.
Just be careful not to get into communities that do the opposite, and leave them quickly when that becomes clear.
This reluctance to get help kills people. The societal norm that says it’s weak for men to seek professional help, that we should be strong and stoic in the face of every situation, kills men.
We have done a good job of removing the stigma of getting help for things like anxiety, depression, ADHD, and multiple other symptoms of mental health issues. We haven’t done enough to make it acceptable for people to talk about the trauma they’ve suffered. Until we do that, and until we recognize that we all have experienced various levels of trauma, we’re going to continue to have a growing mental health crisis on our hands.
