Aside from reeling off the current stats which have already started to dictate our swaying beliefs about Mental Health, I want to consider the partition of both our external, physical (NHS) and that to which we often silence, our internal, mental health system.

Nowadays we fret the thought of having to stand in a queue; on the phone; at the till; on the waiting list, but when it concerns our own health, we are unequivocally anxious as we are (a) patient. That’s if we even get to A&E or our respected medical professional of choice, Google? The symptoms of a ‘headache’ seem to have much more to bear than mere dehydration or lack of sleep. We can now have our niggles and ailments instantaneously diagnosed without a scan, along with assumed expertise of Medical Practice, or is that when you just finish your PT course? It seems that browsing for ‘Chest Pain’ will provide you the same results in kind, whereas simply being anxious and stressed is exactly what makes us human. These are merely our internal defences, and while truth is useful weapon for deceit, wearing it as a label only presents our greatest fears and vulnerabilities as a weakness to be feasted upon, an injured game to a wake of hungry vultures. 

It took a few famous figures to meet their early demise for everyone to start caring about about Mental Health, but while we can like and share posts from our devices that ‘raise awareness’ and show just how caring we are to our Facebook friends, we massively lack the sensitivity to deal with the difficult and frankly morose conversations which we often avoid. While there are people going through an array of different issues, diagnosed or otherwise, we are all too hasty to let the label discern the outcome of social interactions with that person as though they are damaged goods, choose to deny it or not. Ultimately those that need someone to listen should have the facility, and those who are merely looking for unnecessary sympathy should be met with none, everyone else in between is stressed, or anxious, like most of us, stop claiming that you’re ill and start with helping those that are.

If Mental ‘Health’ is the Goggings-esque’ reinforcement of pain and suffering, what can be said for someone that endures none of the sort?  A subversion of someone privileged with hardship, as opposed to an inherited content, to which their highest successes are fuelled by their lowest times. When considering the quantifiable currency of Mental Wealth, one only has to look at the limits of their threshold, where it has been tested before and how fast it is until you say ’NO MORE’ in the pit of desperation.

Notwithstanding the very system in which we entrust with our broken parts, a time to which we approach with a foreboding reluctance, while we look cautiously through the viewing window as though still in control of our best interests and an honest price. Particularly one which treats us as consumers of alleviators rather than patients of cures, sealing up a puncture rather than changing a tyre. No amount of paracetamol can mask an injury, nor can painkillers, a killer of only the sensation of pain and not the root cause. Everything has an application under instances to which cannot be dispelled otherwise, but the fastest solution can be equally short-lived.

I don’t eat Raw, peel the skin off my grapes or sleep in a hyperbaric chamber but do seek to endure physical stress everyday which allows my body to manage external disruption more tenably. I rarely get colds, and when I do it usually only down to the fact of breaking my usual routine which my body requires to operate, not the germ lottery concerning working with the general public.

So what’s wrong with the whole ‘Millenial’, ‘Snowflake’ and the freedom of choice generation? The option to say ‘NO’ No to decisions that will be out of their control, will not make them happy, and will be uncomfortable, WHY would they say YES? Ascertain the kind of person you’d want to give responsibility and high-pressure to, could they handle the stress without any prior experience of something stressful or mildly difficult. Let’s stop creating a generation of ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’ and more of will and would.