Improving mental health requires a change in attitude

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By Nina Bryant, News Sub-editor

The low student response to the University's mental health consultation proves that we need to change our attitudes about mental illness.

Universities all around the country are facing a serious mental health crisis.

Yet, there remains a lingering stigma that we cannot expect to just go away over night. Unfortunately, the despair that we all feel in the midst of such a crisis is not always accompanied by understanding and empathy for what it truly means to be mentally ill.

Whilst we may hear our professors, peers and university spokespeople advocate for better mental health services, there is little discussion about what this really means or how this crisis is really measured.

What we really should be asking is not how much do we care, but how much do we understand?

Following the University’s mental health consultation being overwhelmingly ignored by the student population, conversations have been sparked with regards to why less than 1 per cent of students filled it out.

It is difficult to ascertain where the problem really lies: should we be criticizing the University for their administrative approach to the mental health? Or should we be criticizing the apathy of students, for their reluctance to simply fill in an online consultation?

The complex answer is that it was probably a combination of both.

The simple answer is that the consultation did not yield the response that was needed. Students and staff clearly care about mental health. What we really should be asking is not how much do we care, but how much do we understand?

Given that most of us will have had little or no mental health education at school, and been brought up by parents who lived through an era of asylums and mental illness being a cultural taboo – can we really blame ourselves for a lack of understanding?

If such an indifferent mentality exists, it is on too great a scale for the University to simply ignore it, regardless of where we place blame. We should be challenging the root of that indifference, rather than dismissing the indifference itself.

The consultation was not excessively complex when looking at the vast aims that need to be achieved. Such a poor response clearly demonstrates that there is an issue with attitudes towards mental health within the student body.

Whilst marches demonstrate a sense of justified passion and anger, such campaigning needs to happen in conjunction with pragmatic movements towards change. However, the part an institution has to play in changing attitudes towards mental health should not be underestimated.

Times are changing – but even as recently as when I was at school, mental health was not something that was talked about it. It was something that was very much brushed under the carpet, a source of shame that nobody was supposed to know about.

Such a poor response clearly demonstrates that there is an issue with attitudes towards mental health within the student body.

Unfortunately, the change in attitudes is very recent. The University has to pick up the slack for our generation with regards to mental health education, by encouraging open discussion about mental health and preventing stigma and discrimination within its institution.

Stigma is a huge issue with regards to the damage that a mental illness can have on a person’s life.

Imagine having a chronic ‘physical’ illness and simply having to accept that sometimes people would dismiss your pain and be angry with you for being too lazy, too dramatic, or simply for not fighting hard enough. Or, on the flipside, feeling as though your illness was so draining or so stressful to everyone around you that nobody wanted to be around you. This would induce self-doubt, cause you to feel frustrated, isolated, and no doubt worsen your perceived ability to cope.

When all these elements are already symptoms of an illness, shame and isolation are only fueled by a lack of understanding.

Most of us are guilty of having these attitudes at some level – I know I am, with regards to my implicit attitudes towards myself and towards others. Even if some of these attitudes may no longer be socially acceptable, we cannot deny that it is a difficult mentality to reverse. This is why we need to make approaching services as inviting and as welcoming as possible, for students whose mental illness may never have been received with kindness and who believe that nobody can or will help them.

Mental health is physical health, and it is time we stopped underestimating how biological responses can be triggered by our environment, whether through physical contact or not.

Unfortunately, the plight of mental illness remains a topic that many of us feel we have the right to dismiss, to dramatize and to comment on.

These attitudes take time to change, and are not just achieved by a few moments of clarity. Consistency in this change requires a lot of input from the student body, but it is up to the University to provide the education that students need, regardless of their current state of mental health.

Featured image: Epigram/Ed Southgate

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