Breaking The Silence: Collateral Damage (Mental Health Awarness Month) | (Chapter. 3)

Written by Andi Bazaar, Co-wrote by Gryffen Seth and Tydalé-Oliver Schofield | May 19, 2023

At this community, we firmly believe that our associates are our greatest strength. We're committed to creating an environment where mental health is given as much importance as physical health and where stigma around mental health issues is actively challenged.

This week, we're observing "Mental Health Awareness Week" and this year's theme is anxiety a topic that impacts many of us in various ways.

We're proud to say that we have trained mental health ambassadors within our teams. These dedicated individuals are here to listen, provide support and guide anyone who may be experiencing mental health challenges.

We also understand the crucial role that work-life balance plays in mental health, that is one of the reasons why we've established flexible working policies designed to lessen stress and anxiety at work, helping us maintain a healthier balance in our lives.

We also understand the crucial role that work-life balance plays in mental health. That is one of the reasons why we've established flexible working policies designed to lessen stress and anxiety at work, helping us maintain a healthier balance in our lives.

We'd love to hear from you, what are your thoughts on this year's theme? How do you handle anxiety in your daily life?

Feel free to share your experiences, your story might be the very thing someone else needs to hear.

The theme for this year’s #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek is Anxiety.

I research how the current conversation about mental health is affecting teenagers and I think something is going seriously wrong when it comes to anxiety:

THE BASICS

Anxiety is a common emotion that exists on a continuum throughout the population, as you move up the spectrum it becomes more frequent more intense, more distressing, harder to control and more disruptive to daily life.

The two extreme ends are very different but the trouble is there's clear no transition point between "normal" and "clinical" anxiety and no distinguishing language in the public domain.

As a result of this ambiguity, I think that the massive efforts to raise awareness about anxiety have led many people especially teenagers to diagnose themselves as having anxiety.

Some of these people really do have debilitating anxiety, so awareness would be helpful but others will be experiencing milder more transient anxiety and this is where the problem lies.

Adolescence is a period of identity development, it may be that the identity of "having anxiety" is now being adopted by some teenagers as a culturally-popular way to understand their distress. See excellent paper below on this idea:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0075417X.2022.2160478

We might now be in the bizarre situation where having anxiety is actually socially desirable among teenagers, especially girls. I am regularly asked if having anxiety (and depression) might now be considered cool along young people.

One parent recently told me that her teenage daughter felt left out because she was the only one in her peer group who didn’t have anxiety or depression.

There’s no empirical work on this idea yet though (as far as I know).

As I always say, many teenagers (and adults) desperately need help for their anxiety and aren’t getting it. Stigma still exists but that doesn’t negate the above. Some teenagers desperately need help and *in parallel* some are receiving and acting on deeply unhelpful ideas.

This isn't just semantics, many teachers email me to say that increasingly, young people are asking for adjustments (eg deadline extensions, exams in different rooms). In some cases, this is necessary but if adjustments are granted indiscriminately and indefinitely, this is akin to avoidance.

This can maintain and exacerbates anxiety in the long-run, setting up young people to fail.
See thoughtful commentary on this by a headteacher below:

https://www.queenwood.nsw.edu.au/Queenwood-News/Opinion/Spotlight-On-Anxiety

I think we need to take very seriously the possibility that with the best intentions, awareness-raising efforts have unleashed something deeply concerning among some teenagers:

They have received the message that feeling anxious is something that must always be labelled and accommodated, in a way that *in principle* might be useful but *in practice* often isn’t.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? HERE ARE SOME POSSIBILITIES:

• Fund better treatments and better access to treatments for anxiety, ig we can successfully reduce clinical anxiety across the population all of this might calm down.
• Research how well-known aspects of adolescent development like peer influence and identity development, interact with mental health awareness efforts to influence outcomes.
• Empirically test the impact of anxiety awareness materials, we should stop assuming that talking about all this is inherently better than not talking about it
  (fin)

Since it’s "Mental Health Awareness Week" and the topic being around anxiety we thought we would do something a little bit different, we asked our group participants about their personal experiences of anxiety and the techniques they used to cope.

CAFFEINE

A lot of our participants felt drinks with a high caffeine content like energy juice and coffee only added to feelings of anxiety, on days they felt very anxious they felt cutting these out made a difference to them.

EXERCISE

Getting out in fresh air and getting in some exercise was a very popular coping technique for our participants. A walk, a workout or just doing a sport you love can get you away from your own thoughts which is a such a positive for your well-being.

FOCUS ON YOUR BREATHING

At times when you feel yourself becoming very anxious in certain situations take a few minutes to calm down and focus your breathing. 4 - 4 - 4 and 5-4-3-2-1 are both very useful techniques.

WRITE DOWN YOUR THOUGHTS

Writing down your feelings can at times be a lot more comfortable than talking about them, getting a journal to write your daily thoughts will always give you something to look back on and let’s you see the progress you have made.

PEER SUPPORT

Seeking advice from peers that you trust can help calm you down, talking about how you are feeling is most of the time the best solution. As a group we find our WhatsApp chat a crucial support network where people can chat to their peers at anytime of the day.

Please be aware that not every technique will work for you and different things work for different people, everyone’s journey is different and these are what works for certain people within our group.

Meditation, music and the headspace app were also mentioned by participants.

My experiences as a PhD student with Depression, Anxiety, Panic annd Anxiety Disorders for "Mental Health Awareness Month" to raise awareness:

First and foremost, I want to say my experiences are my own and unique to me. I am also very privileged to have such incredible support from my advisor who not only supports my mental health, but advocates for me.

Secondly, it’s difficult to show up knowing that there is a huge lack of accessibility and a lot of stigma regarding mental health and mental illness in academia + higher education. For all those showing up, I’m so proud of you.

Struggling with mental health in grad school even with support, therapy and my involvement in advocacy it’s so overwhelmingly isolating. There have been instances where I have felt painstakingly alone.

To be clear, I have my illnesses under control. However, the stressors of coursework and the work culture or environment are huge factors. With deadlines, I have to start early with anticipation that I have bad days that are debilitating that it’s difficult to work. m

That’s the thing about mental illness: sometimes triggers, anxiety or panic attacks waves come out of nowhere and rest is necessary. People oftentimes perceive this rest or recovery as “laziness,” when in reality mental illness is so mentally, emotionally, physically debilitating.

Sometimes flare ups happen unexpectedly which can impact my deadlines via coursework or research, I oftentimes have to advocate for myself: whether it be extensions, extra time, navigating this by *grinding* to get things done which further contributes to burn out.

In this process, I also feel this need to “prove” myself in classes so when that time does come for an extension, I’m taken seriously. This is something I’m working on but this is also the result of my personal experiences in higher education where this had to be the case.

Since starting grad school, I dropped most of my classes my first year and took an incomplete on the one I didn’t drop I still haven’t done my quals, research? Yeah, I’ve barely touched that. There’s more to things beneath the surface and these things don’t make me a failure.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that my mental illnesses do not dictate my capabilities as a graduate student and scientist, I am navigating a system that does not prioritize mental health and accessibility even with a community it’s so difficult!

People recommend therapy and meds when there are so many financial and accessibility barriers for academics even then medication and therapy don’t make everything better.

Therapy and meds don’t fix the toxic and unsustainable environments and cultures at institutions.

While it has been great to see a shift in conversation regarding #AcademicMentalHealth, actions speak louder than words. Therapy dogs and mental health seminars about self-care don’t fix the systemic stigma and ableism prevalent in academia and higher education.

Mental Illnesses and Trauma don’t care who you are and where you are life, those things don’t make the darkness, pain, isolation any less valid. Progress isn’t linear, it’s a battle and a struggle. If you’re struggling, I want you to know you are not alone, you are loved & valid.

If you’re struggling, you shouldn’t have to learn to advocate for yourself. You shouldn’t have to learn how to navigate a broken system. Most of all, I want to emphasize you belong here even if the system doesn’t make you feel that way.

I would be remiss to not mention the intersections of mental health and marginalized groups, people don’t realize how much of an impact the culture and environments of departments and institutions impact marginalized academics and the intersections of mental health.

It’s incredibly disingenuous for departments and institutions to highlight “community” and “inclusivity” during recruitment when this isn’t the case and there is little support once we get there. There is much work to be done.

Students and post-docs can speak out as much as they want but faculty also need to listen to voices + experiences as there is a clear power-dynamic in this system. They can make change happen at the departmental-level but the real question is: will they listen?

• Depression
• Social Anxiety
• Grief
• Suicidal Thoughts

These are the mental illnesses I have and while some are more present than others, they need to be spoken about equally to stop the stigma around mental health.

Depression and Social Anxiety have been a constant in my life for over 20 years, my depression intensified with the death of my mom (and then again with my sister) and that’s obviously where the grief and suicidal thoughts made a way to me!

FOR THE PAST 5 YEARS IT’S BEEN SO HARD

There where times that I just wish I could join my mom and sister because I couldn’t imagine my life without them! There was just one instance that I took action to end my life, but stopped because my fiancé had come home from work early! I think that was there moment I knew.

I needed help which I did, in October 2021 I went onto medication and also saw a therapist which helped me to control the way I thought and made me realise I have so much to live for. It took a while of course, but I got there. I’ll never get over the loss of them.

One of the last things my mom said to me was that she was so proud of me and one of the last things my sister said was to live every day like it’s the last because you never know when it’ll end and she’s right.

2022 WAS THE TURNING POINT TO GETTING MYSELF BACK TO THE OLD CARMEN

In the last year and half I am so proud of myself for the things I’ve accomplished, such as travelling on my own since there was a time I couldn’t leave my house because of how bad my social anxiety was and meeting new people.

I needed to get out of my comfort zone because how I saw it was, I didn’t want to reach the age of 80 amd be filled with so many what ifs. I want to get to that age and say “I did that" — I began to love myself which as I’ve said I never thought I’d see that day.

However the last 5 months haven’t been the best for me mentally, the heartache/stress of my dads cancer and then a month ago falling out of love with myself again!

If I’m being honest, the reason I’ve been quite sporadic in my posting and the breaks is because with me falling out of love with myself also the old thoughts came back to me I thought I’d I can’t love myself (again) how can people love me. Then I started getting paranoid thinking people hate me etc.

Anyway, I’m not quite there with loving myself again but the other thoughts have gone! If you love me, great! If you like me, great!

If anyone is suffering please know you’re not and never will be alone, there is always someone out there who wants to listen and be it professionally or not.

“IT’S OKAY TO NOT BE OKAY”

Whether I know you or not, please know I am always here and will be in your corner.

A SPECIAL THANKS TO:

• Andi Bazaar (Writer)
• Yevhn Gertz (Director Photography)
• Dr Oliver Schofield, MD (Consulting/Co-writer)
• Dr Seth Gryffen, MD (Consulting/Co-writer)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
• Scott Wynné Schofield (Publisher)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Jwan Hofflér Conwall (Art Interior Design)
• Hugo-licharre Freimann (Ass Director)
• Shot at GQ’s Studios by José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph
• In appearance by "Hugo-licharre Freimann" (Model)