Writing about the stigma attached to mental health problems is the 101 of mental health blogs, to the point that it is hard to say anything that hasn’t been said a hundred times already. While the situation is still bad, a broad front ranging from healthcare providers to patients, from relatives to celebrities is trying to raise awareness and more importantly, to educate the general public.
While this is definitely a good thing, it can sometimes lead to unintended results. I remember a conversation at a family get-together somehow shifting to a person I didn’t know and someone saying “no, she no longer has that job, she had a burnout”. With a condescending expression, one of my aunts said: “Burnout? From what?”
That was not the usual prejudice one would expect. If that conversation had taken place a few years earlier, the reaction might have been something along the lines of “oh she should just get it together”. But it wasn’t, because my aunt knew what burnout is, what causes it and that you can’t just dismiss it. And yet she managed to react in a way that makes my toenails curl up. She didn’t think bad of that person because having a burnout is a sign of weakness, she thought bad of that person because she apparently didn’t earn her burnout by hard work. The more I think about it, the more I think that this is a far worse reaction.
I am not even going to elaborate about how everyone with an illness deserves empathy, no matter how they got it. I am not going to elaborate on how what is perceived as a burden by one person is perceived differently by another.
What really grinds my gears about this is how an illness is seen as an achievement. Got burnout? Yeah that sucks, but at least it shows you are a hard worker! Well done! You got burnout? Well you don’t deserve that, you cheater!
There are just so many things wrong with that. First off, the idea itself is disgusting. It turns suffering from something that should be alleviated into a commodity that is needed to justify emotions or mental states. Secondly, this type of pressure environment is part of what drives people into burnout in the first place. Thirdly, this can lead to the idea that only people that have “earned” their suffering deserve help, treatment and empathy. And finally, this type of thinking can be expanded onto almost everything. You have depression? You never had it bad enough to warrant that! You have PTSD? What did you experience that was sooo traumatic?
We often hear complaints about how we live in a performance-based society that makes everything revolve around how much you can accomplish, that dehumanizes us by devaluating all other aspects of our individuality. But in many ways we have moved beyond that and live in a suffering-based society, where your status and your rights are dependent on how much damage you are willing to take, how much agony you are willing to put up with. This type of thinking is not just related to mental illness, this concerns everyone!
I guess I should end with some sort of solution. Well there is no simple solution to changing the ways of thinking of one person, let alone an entire society. I could end it with the old “If you want change, change yourself first” but I have an irrational aversion to these types of motto calendar catchphrases. I dunno, I guess thanks for reading and maybe thinking about it.
The Metaphorical of Delphi 