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The System of Mental Illness

I recently had to write down a bit of a summary of my mental health history after a consultation with my doctor. This is not something I’ve done before and I was surprised at how helpful I found it. Not because I found out something new, but because dots I’d loosely linked in the past were finally getting connected. Putting a clear timeline down on paper really allowed me to see for myself how my mental health issues have progressed since childhood and specifically when they were exacerbated.

You see I am not one of those people who have memories of mental anguish from childhood. I know people who can remember symptoms of their various diagnoses from before the age of 5. For me, there’s always been a feeling of suddenly being cursed – it happening out of the blue. My childhood was defined by freedom, curiosity and innocence. I was left to my own devices for the most part, living in a rural place, where I’d adventure freely across the fields, by the coast and in the woods. There were very little expectations, I don’t recall ever being told ‘you must do this’, and I was never surveyed. In all honesty, this was as close as you could get to my idea of heaven.

I spent hours sitting by the stream in the woods, building dams, catching bugs and the occasional amphibian. Then when I got bored of that I’d be somewhere else, maybe I’d cycle into the nearby town with my childhood friend. We often got lost and ended up staying out to the point where our parents would be worried. I remember them shouting,“We nearly called the police!”, when we finally returned in our knackered state, spent from a day of whimsical adventures. Truth be told I did not think much about life then, I did not ruminate. I preferred to be actively engaged in something, and found great joy in coming up with various projects or games to keep myself busy.

So, where did it all go wrong? These days I find even the most basic tasks a monumental struggle, I am restless and twitchy and generally feel uneasy about life. If my childhood was as idyllic and peaceful as I describe, how’d I end up where I am now? Having had a chance to sit down and really think about it, it is pretty clear to me that it all started when my ‘world of wonder’ was taken away from me and replaced with a new, imposed reality. School. At age 6, I heard the gate shut behind me and my existence would change in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine at my ripe young age. I didn’t go to nursery or kindergarten, so I did not have any prior introduction to this world. A world with set times where you must do certain things, a day scheduled – not by yourself – but by someone else.

I remember the first day of meeting my class, standing in the assembly hall of my school. There were so many people, and I was terrified. I hid behind my mum for the most part, because I had this feeling that I’d drown if I didn’t anchor myself. I met some of my ‘school mates’, and within very little time I had my first experience of bullying due to my weight. My mother quickly got involved and diffused the situation, but my first impressions weren’t great. From that day on the new reality kicked in. Having to get up in the morning, then sit in a room for an entire day, doing tasks as mandated by teachers. It felt claustrophobic, I would spend the entire day dreaming of going home, staring out the window – wondering why we weren’t out there in the sun. The wait felt like holding your breath for hours upon hours. The forced interactions in the recesses were not much of a respite from it all either, as I quickly realised that none of the other kids liked the same things I did, they loved sports for the most part, and came from urban areas with strict overachieving parents, which was alien to me.

Then started the cycle of masking, which became my most honed skill over the 9 years of primary school. I started getting interested in football, not because I was, but because I had to. It gave me some friendships, though none of them felt very real or deep. It was superficial at best. I began getting interested in fashion, I’d beg for fancy clothes and gadgets from my parents. I ended up getting obsessed with shoes but wouldn’t barely wear them outdoors for the fear of them getting muddy. Who was this kid? Certainly not the one who’d traverse landscapes in all weathers, playing about in the muck, like a pig in mud. It was a shell of a human being, molded by the projected values of the imposing collective I found myself stuck in. I would sometimes have brief moments where I successfully tricked myself into thinking that I truly enjoyed something. But once I got home, and I was completely on my own, I could feel my whole body convulsing into this yearning exhale. Like a kettle letting out steam.

During those years my mental health declined rapidly. I did not recall having OCD prior to starting school, but soon after the intrusive thoughts began to pile up and I was forced to do rituals on repeat. I believe being stuck in an environment that forces you to sit and unproductively ruminate for hours on end, is what really brought my mental health to its knees. The limitations made me feel imprisoned, and so in order to cope I had to find solace in my brain. But without external stimuli, this brilliant tool that you house inside your skull quickly becomes prone to repetition and obsessing. In the past I had the natural environment to explore and no end of little creative tasks to partake in with my mum and dad, as such I had neither time or desire to sit and worry about needless things. And more importantly I wasn’t in an environment where I felt constantly compared to other people, in sharp contrast to school, so I didn’t focus excessively on my own inadequacies.

It should be noted that it wasn’t only OCD that I ended up struggling with during the school years, but a whole emulgation of anxiety related problems. The experience from start to finish was like an overload for my nervous system. I fully believe that the way institutions of learning are designed only works for the few, and it acts as a weeding out process. If you’re able to equate your worth with intellectual prowess, then yes, education fosters those values and you will thrive. But if you don’t have that in you, you will fall behind, sooner or later. I think the statistics on youth mental health suffering speak for themselves in this regard. For some of us the pressures both academically and socially are just too much, and we don’t know how to operate under it. That’s the way it is for me, and it shocks me that the only course of action we can think of is to suggest that ‘you just try a bit harder’. How can I do that, when I feel with every fibre of my being that I cannot handle it? Is it really preferable to push a person to do something they know they can’t handle in the long term?

Because that’s the big fallacy of the way we run things in society. We are not too interested in long term, sustainable results. It’s all a facade. There’s no doubt that people on the fringes of society, with their cocktails of disorders, can be integrated quickly and efficiently - in the short term, mind. You can make it so tortuous that they have no option but to perform, like some monkey in a circus. Jobcentres are phenomenal at that. Strip finances and opportunities from the slackers if they don’t straighten their backs and take some responsibility. It does not get to the root of the problem, though, does it? I think a great starting point would be recognition of the fact that some of us just cannot function under the pressures of the current system. And this demographic, of people that struggle to fit in, will continue to grow, that much is clear. I find it ironic how as more people than ever are run down by stress in the workplace, the only thing that changes is the rate at which anti-depressants are being prescribed. I often hear people talk about the wonders of modern psychiatry and the various medicines available, but it should be considered that all of this research, done under the guise of wanting to alleviate mental suffering, is still being carried out under the framework of the system, prioritising quick fixes – ideally medicinal – to get people out unto the production line in due time. I personally am of the perception that I am not mentally ill, but live under a system which gives me no other option but to operate in ways that are harmful to me.

Perhaps more importantly than focusing on what is wrong with you and I, and how we can be repaired, we could begin to rethink, as a society, the worth of the individual and its well-being? The most productive and creative people are ones that feel safe, content and happy. I’m a human being, after all, not a human doing. I’ve read archaeological studies done on ‘primitive’ tribes who seem to have a better grasp of individual autonomy, respect, and how it is linked to increased productivity. Their view of the individualism seems to be far more complete and advanced than our simplistic, egotistical take on it. Our system pushes competitiveness and rigidity, feeding the neurosis of the human mind, leaving people with nowt but feelings of inadequacy and incompetency if they don’t perform according to expectation. Meanwhile the sort of individualism I advocate for is one that genuinely sees the person, completely, with flaws and strengths and understands that if we cater to the needs of the individual, they will be far more inclined to partake and their efforts will be motivated by a genuine desire to contribute. This is of course hard to achieve as most workplaces are alienating destinations you reluctantly go to, and most ‘jobs’ aren’t meant to be enjoyable or rewarding on an individual level. You have to be incredibly intoxicated to see sense in doing mostly unfulfilling repetitive tasks day in and day out, to have a few days off here and there, while being told how you’re alive in one of the most advanced periods of human history. There's a bitter irony in living in an age of endless stimuli, with a globally connected world at your fingertips, yet still being sentenced to tedious hours of mundane toil with nothing to show for it.

It is important to clarify that this is not me saying that I don’t want to do things, though I see how it could come across that way. It isn’t that I want to sleep all day and watch the telly. But I want what I do to feel fulfilling, I want to use my skill-sets, of which I have many, in a way where I can see the direct impact of my actions. This is a lot harder to achieve than you’d think, as most work doesn’t produce anything or provide a service to serve a community any more, in part due to corporatisation but also the shift towards academia. Ideally you should pick a career path and pursue it. But not all of us possess this decisiveness, and I certainly don’t want to do the same thing every day, that will drive me insane. I think telling a person to pick something they enjoy doing and then condemning them to a lifetime of doing it, until they despise it, is cruel. I’m aware that doing one thing for the rest of your life is a godsend to some people, but I truly do not believe that applies to the majority of us. To assume that we don’t require variety in the spheres of work, while advocating for it in every other aspect in life, seems odd to me. But it makes total sense when you consider that our institutions of education and work aren’t concerned with anything but sorting the problem of idleness, which essentially is a numbers game.

So, is it really any wonder that so many people are mentally unwell under this system? I think not. All I know is that if society cannot evolve to meet the needs of the people it serves, offering flexibility and inclusivity, it should be dismantled before it is too late. The road we’ve paved for ourselves will inevitably lead to large scale burnout, fueling the flames of the rising mental health epidemic. Remember, we once prophesied the modern age and its technologies as an alleviating saviour, eliminating the need for work, granting us the time and freedom to cultivate healthier environments, immersing ourselves more meaningfully with our communities – but nothing has been further from the truth. Here’s my proposal: remove compulsory schooling and give us de-centralised, genuinely productive, organic activities away from the bleakness of industry and urbanism, and I dare wager that you’d see the people flourishing.

And on that note I conclude this blog post. I wish I could be a wombat walker.

Image Credit: discovertasmania.com.au