Everyone’s depressed nowadays…? Part 1

Do you sometimes hear comments like: “everyone's depressed nowadays, everyone needs to just get on with it”? I find it so interesting when people say this. Let me explain why. 

Firstly, I don't agree, but I understand where the sentiment comes from.  The are a few reasons comments like this may be made: the internet has made information about everything more accessible, mental health terminology is more in use, and social media has made people more ‘open’ emotionally than ever. Sometimes figure indicate mental health problems are on the rise. But I think, surely the data can only be since we’ve been collecting this information. 

With the idea that ‘everyone is depressed nowadays’, let’s go back a few decades.  I think about the people who experienced poverty, faced famines, or worked in poor houses.  I think about the soldiers who faced unimaginable horrors fighting Nazi’s, and the people who they left behind. I think about the generations forced to move, or sold a promise to come to the UK, and then faced endless prejudices when they tried to work, or from the people they came to help. And so on…  Once you start thinking about this, you see so many more examples. 

Of course these people didn’t post on social media about how depressed they are, or what an evil person their boss is, or how they can’t sleep at night. But, I bet they were in some way depressed, anxious and traumatised. 

We also don’t have to look too hard for evidence of this. We all know old-ey mental health phrases, the phrases that put word to the experience, or perceptions of others with a mental health problem.  Any therapist can tell us that in therapy their descendants say things like “oh my dad was bad with his nerves”, “my mum drank to forget what happened”, or “he was a quiet man”. Pan further out, think about the whole music genre called ‘The Blues’. Edvard Munches Scream. The opiate addition of the fictional, yet very real, Tommy Shelby. We didn’t collect mental health information, but the data is evident in their descendants and legacies. 

These generations ‘got on with it’, sure, because they had to. Or, they were looked after by their families, or ostracised, abandoned; branded ‘bonkers’ or called shellshocked. Sometimes, families had to live with ‘quirks’ at best, and at worst suffered unimaginable abuse.  Or, they disappeared to the ‘nut house’, ‘taken away by men in white coats’, and vanished from society, forbidden from participating, forever in an institution, like ‘Bedlam’.  It goes on - were those who were ‘off the wagon’, ‘cracked up’, ‘melancholic’, ‘highly strung’, marble loosing, ‘hysterical’, attic dwelling, simply getting on with it?

The old mental-health speak is in our everyday language - and such stigmatising words are so engrained in our heads, we don’t even know we’re saying them.  In contrast, the new words just sound different, but they mean the same thing. 

Or do they? Mental health terminology that makes it into public conversation is thankfully a bit more specific. The ‘nutcase’ who just randomly yells abominations? We understand that they have Tourettes and may feel embarrassed about their tics themselves. The child screaming at their parents in the airport? They have Autism and need space, not stares. The ‘taking the piss’ woman who needs to leave work earlier? She has OCD and whilst she’s in treatment for the next 12 weeks, we can adapt the workplace policy to help her. 

Yes, everyone is talking about mental health, but doesn’t this sound like a better conversation than ‘just get on with it - even though the problems are leaking out into all other aspects of life anyway’? It seems to me, the words are mostly more respectful and accurate, if understood. 

Now thinking about ‘get on with it’.  On one hand, sometimes ‘just get on with it’ is needed. For sure, let’s not malinger, wallow, or find peculiar advantages to being mentally unwell. ‘Getting on with it’ is one blade on the swiss army knife of survival, and getting on with it is undoubtedly how many of us exist and survive today - I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, if it is effective. 

On the other hand, I’ve seen the power of listening to someone for 50 - 60 minutes, without interrupting, without giving my personal opinion, and without minimising their problem. I sometimes only have one or two sessions with people who need that space, something clicks, and they’re done. For example one man emphatically sigh and said to me “I needed that, for someone to just hear me out!”. That could have been a whole lifetime of problems. That’s why people go to therapists. That's why people name the problem more specifically now.

Therapy of course does more than just listen, and definitely doesn’t solve the systemic, societal problems that contribute to mental health problems, the field of Psychology can and has sometimes contributed to these problems! Therapy is not a magic fix-all. But, for those who say ‘get on with it’, therapy can be a part of recovering from depression and helping us get on with it quicker.