The Global Mental Health Crisis: A Bubble Soon to Burst?

"The urgency is very clear," she said. "It's kind of like hearing about the initial banks that failed, then the whole housing market. I'd hate for the whole system to fail before people wake up and respond to this as the true crisis that it is."

It has been recognized there is a global mental health crisis.  The OECD has mental health very much in mind.  Countries like Australia and the UK have recognized the fundamental truth that you can't have health without mental health; the mind, after all, is simply another system in the body.  Here in Canada, we have our first national mental health strategy - from a government that doesn't believe in nationalized anything.

That shows how seriously people at the highest levels take this emerging crisis.

Yet, economic times are tight and when there really is no more money to be spent, services like mental health are among the first to get trimmed.  Worse still; on the whole, people still don't get mental health.  The recent CAMH Defeat Denial campaign brilliantly sets out the common responses people with mental illnesses have.

Adding to the challenge - the way we look at work is completely counterinuitive to the way mental health functions.  Micro-managing bosses are convinced that their approach is both right and necessary; they have the gold, they make the rules, employees owe them for the right to work and therefore must be at their beck-and-call 24/7, since work cycles now run without end.  Have you ever told a micromanager that their "management style" is actually detrimental to business functioning and damaging your state of mental health?  If you don't get fired, you'll probably hear one of the defeat denial lines.

Which is why people suffer in silence.  Nobody wants to be judged and know that if they speak out, that's exactly what will happen.  Heartbreakingly, that's often as true for the micromanagers (see micromanaging disorder) as it is for the micromanaged.  As we're afraid of labels or are concerned about ourselves or the nation becoming overmedicated, we simply try to ignore the realities of mental health.  When we do that, we're missing the obvious, affordable but ultimately frightening solution that's really all that's left to us: culture change.

As a society, we need to rethink the way we view mental health - which will mean challenging some confabulated notions we have about identity and self-control.  Neurscience has already got the information - we just need to accept and internalize it.  We need to revamp the way we look at work and motivation.  We also need to understand cognitive development more closely and keep how individual brains work in mind as we develop our next models of education.

In short, we need to stop focusing on curing lead poisoning and start taking the lead out of our water.  This is all possible - we can make our systems work more efficiently, fostering better outcomes - if we do so consciously and proactively.

That's the challenge of the 21st Century - our cognitive equivalent to the labour movement that stemmed from the Industrial Revolution. 

Welcome to the Conscious Revolution.

Jim Flaherty, Work, Social Value and Mental Health

“There is no bad job. The only bad job is not having a job,” noting he once drove a taxi and refereed hockey.”

This is an interesting insight into Jim Flaherty’s thinking.  It fits with his pattern of snipping at opposition, snipping at the provinces, snipping at anyone that disagrees with him, frankly.  I’ve see this time and again – people who have struggled don’t think others should have support.  Is this because the person being asked truly feels that it’s better to suffer through hardship, or is it that they don’t want others to have advantages they themselves missed out on?

Each generation should strive to make life better for the one that follows.  This generation is the first in Canadian history that won’t see that trend continued.

I think the underlying problem of the Flaherty approach – and the generational gap we’re facing – is that when you put your own interest first, everything gets weighed against the value for the person.  That’s limited thinking.  We have so many shortages of specialization in Canada – why on earth would we want to force people to cling to the bottom rung?  Given Flaherty's commitment to supporting people with mental illness and combatting the stigma around mental health, this must be a difficult issue for him; his approach to work runs directly contrary to current understandings about the impact of work on mental health.

The solution isn’t sink-or-swim, nor is it keeping everyone afloat – it’s about teaching people to fish.

If Jim Flaherty disagrees, he should ask himself this – is Canada better off having him as a politician or a taxi driver?

Don’t Panic: Diversity Is Good For You

“I beg of you not to do this to my daughter… and not to do this to Ontario’s children.”

Charles McVety speaking out against Gay-Straight Alliances in Ontario schools

“Whether you believe deafness to be a disability or not, Deaf cultures and communities are part of Ontario’s cultural diversity.  Thus, Ontario government has no business favoring the Hearing world over them.”

M Jordan expressing his fear of “deaf genocide”

We’ve got leaders railing against the perceived threats from foreign students and foreign workers.  In Quebec, there are language laws to protect and maintain the authenticity of an evolved dialect of Latin.  In other parts of Canada, there are staunch opponents to national bilingualism, despite the evidence suggesting that knowing more languages provides greater opportunity and can reduce risk of Alzheimer’s.

To me, these are all variations on the position of not wanting a daughter because 1) she can’t carry on a family line and b) she’s going to be taken away from you.  They imply a fear of loss, of subjugation, of losing out to another.

They are all instinctual, reactive positions.  They might feel right, but they aren’t based in fact.

Having a son-in-law is not detraction; it’s an addition, a linking of families, a provision of new opportunities for partnership, expansion and growth.  Plus, if there are grandkids, your genes get carried on anyway.

Learning more languages doesn’t steal from the richness of mother tongues – it adds to one’s capacity to think in different ways, come up with better solutions and develop competitive advantages.  In a global economy, who doesn’t want multilingual employees?

Deafness is a condition of biology that getting cochlear implants doesn’t change, only accomodates.  Having assistive technology enhances your ability and can actually facilitate cognitive development (plus, you can still turn them off when you want silence).  There aren’t separate “deaf” and “aural” worlds – there’s just one world.  The only question is how much access to it do you have?

Foreigners are the embodiment of diversity – you can feel they threaten your genetic/culture superiority, but what they really do is challenge your stagnancy.  We’re all about innovation, right?  Infinite diversity allows for infinite combinations.  We want more diversity, not less.

Gay isn’t a contagion.  Hearing about or even seeing gays kissing doesn’t impose any physical “risk” or “contagion” (even if you feel that it does).  For that matter, science isn’t a threat to religion any more than religion as a concept is inherently an impediment to science.

We all inhabit this small planet.  We all breathe the same air.  We all cherish our children’s future.

And we can only move forward when we do it together.