The conversations surrounding mental health have graduated from whispered corners cloaked in shadows of shame to one of the most dominant topics of our day. The time is not long behind us when the revelation that a celebrity had undergone counselling or therapy was an “admission.” The media still generously overflows our news feeds with the opinions of those who believe that mental illness is the result of being spoiled or weak or deficient in some other important way.

The discussion need not be so contentious or politically partisan. Mental health is simply the acknowledgement that physical health is not all there is.

Is it really so hard to believe that a person can be perfectly healthy from a physical point of view, and yet not be fully happy, motivated, extroverted, and resilient?

The statement reversed would seem to go like this: “If you are physically healthy, you ought to be satisfied with life.”

No reasonable person would make this claim unironically. We can all agree that happiness and productivity are a touch more involved than that. While “mental illness” is stigmatized as something that only happens to weak people, it is in fact as common as getting a flu. Almost everyone will get the flu at least once during their lifetime. It does not mean you are dying, or that you were not tough enough. For most people, it is temporary, but highly debilitating while it lasts.

We are all on a spectrum of mental health that varies day-to-day, usually through events out of our control, and occasionally as a result of not taking sufficient care to monitor our health.

No one majorly affected by financial crisis, trauma, grief, etc., chose to be so affected. It would be absurd to accuse someone who has recently lost a spouse or parent of “milking it” because they are unhappy given the circumstances. Quite the opposite is true: a conversation with a person whose spouse has just died of cancer, but who nevertheless seems fine, would be highly disturbing.

This is not to equate grief with clinically-diagnosable mental illness, but merely to make the point that a state of deep grief is normal, expected, knowable, and unstoppable. A person experiencing such a state cannot be said to be mentally/emotionally healthy at that time, and there is nothing abnormal about that.

Mental Health is Not New

We all have best days and worse days. Particularly from a work point of view, the idea that every person should be operating at a high level every single day is not sustainable. What we expect is an average that hovers somewhere in-between our extremes. This is our capacity.

It is not logical to attempt the argument that our era has a unique problem with mental health. Although technology certainly has an extraordinary influence which will take more time to completely parse, the basic stressors of the condition of being human are relatively unchanging. Financial worries, relationship struggles, what to eat, sick pets or family members… the list is daunting.

Enjoying your job, your colleagues, and your hours increases your capacity, and vice versa. The dialogue now opening up thanks to progression in our culture and the advancing fields of psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience is going to increase capacity in the long run. We are learning how to create optimal workplace conditions for sustaining individual capacities at their peak.

Get Ahead of the Curve