Mental Health - what has happened to resilience?

Totally agree with your posts Peasblossom and growstuff.
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My closest friend has some of the problems you describe growstuff and I completely agree. The service over 30 years has been very variable although the crisis team have been on the whole excellent.

Growstuff, your post confirms that funding for psychological and psychiatric problems is important.

Here,here growstuff. It seems psychosis is in the ‘too hard’ basket and unless you have come across it in your family or personally there is little understanding of the devastation it causes. Trying to communicate with a family member in the grip of a psychotic episode is almost impossible so we turn to the psychiatrists . If you are lucky you get a good one but they seem to be few and far between and mostly not in the public sector, either. Same here as it seems to be in UK.

I disagree with you NellG. I say that as somebody who has been on the receiving end of NHS mental health services twice - the first time was nearly 30 years ago, when I was seen promptly by a proper psychiatrist (not somebody with a diploma in counselling) and the second time more recently. I've also had to seek psychiatric help for somebody very close to me and paid dearly for it because almost nothing is available on the NHS.

The standard NHS treatment is a link to some dreadful, patronising app, which talks about being "low" or "having the blues". No, having the blues is what you go through when you're on your own and the weather is rubbish! Gggrrr!

If you're lucky, you get referred to group CBT, which might suit some people with minor depression or anxiety, but is appalling for anybody with serious psychosis.

It seems that there's been an explosion in the number of people who have mental health issues. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it has resulted in serious problems being trivialised.

"Getting on with life" when something bad happens doesn't mean you are dealing with that event in the healthiest manner. I dont call that resilience, I call it survival and adaptation.
For example, a person could deal with grief in a manner that is harmful for him/herself and everybody around them.
That will bring more problems apart from the grief - vicious cycle

I am so glad these days mental health is taken more seriously.
Not everything that comes our way can be handled with a "get on with life" attitude.
The same as needing a medical doctor to take care of the appendix, a hairdresser to get your hair cut, etc

I guess we need to separate out psychiatric problems and psychological problems. Different needs, different solutions those sometimes they can overlap.

Which leads back to the original op.
If opting out of mothers day emails is helpful for some people, then that's great.

I'm not sure poor mental health has that much to do with NHS underfunding tbh. Not for the Axis 2 disorders, which are perceived as psychological rather than organic in origin.

It's more that human beings are wholly bad at having it, maintaining and keeping it. We are pretty vile to each other a lot of the time, and even more vile to ourselves. Has anyone never stood in front of a mirror and hated something that they see? And then called themselves all kinds of insulting names, like fat, ugly, useless, worthless etc. Humans invent standards no one can meet then trash other humans when they fail. No amount of money will alter that, in fact sometimes it makes it worse. The change begins with us, each single individual. All MH professionals have is a toolkit they can share, they don't have the answer. Having more hammers won't build a better shed, but knowing how to use one will. Why don't we try and solve it by not making it 'everyone else's' problem - ie, I don't have to do anything because all that needs to happens is for the govt to give MH services more money...

Perhaps we could start by being a bit more pleasant to each other, less judgement and more tolerance perhaps?

Exactly MissA That's the reality.
Cabbie No there is no rhyme nor reason. There were 6 of us siblings in this horrible household growing up. It was too much for one of us unfortunately. He couldn't cope. We are all nervous wrecks.
However, the most well balanced of us is my other brother whose son died of cancer at 16 and his wife dropped dead a few years later at 49.
He has picked himself up and is amazing. You never hear him whinge.

If it is anything like here the mental health services are definitely at the bottom of the pile as regards funding . In fact they are dire. They patch people up and send them on their way ASAP with absolutely no follow up whatsoever. I am talking about severe mental illness here. Unless clients are violent or a threat to others they might as well forget any but the most basic help. It makes me sick the way they talk about these places where you can phone for help. It is totally mythical , there is no help unless you just have a very mild illness and even then I doubt whether there is much there beyond talking to a few volunteers. I am not talking about myself, I have been blessed with a fairly strong and positive outlook on life but members of my family have been unlucky.

Kate1949 I so agree!
Oh yes, grief. Take as long as you need...
Unless you have the dwp breathing down your neck to get a job, and a 20 year old work "coach" informing you that working is the best thing for you.

Sometimes there is no rhyme nor reason why one person in a situation is Ok and another in the same situation is not. Blanket assumptions don’t work.
My sister and I had the same upbringing but I am fine, she is not. She has had mental illness all her life, diagnosed at the age of 18. She has had support and treatment but now is in a care home with no real quality of life. She was taken off the one drug that did work for her because of risks to her physically, but at what cost to her well being.
My step daughter also has serious mental illnesses and had to wait four years for proper treatment to even begin. MH is seriously underfunded, and that needs to be dealt with, let alone all the recent instances where support is needed. It is good that people’s mental health is acknowledged these days but, I agree that the media make too much of it.
There is a huge difference between being mentally ill and feeling sad or struggling to cope with genuine difficulties. Both are real, and both need support one way or another, but then I think there are some people who latch on to the idea through its exposure in the media and convince themselves they need help too, when really they need to find ways of coping.

I think you're right MissA. I've got on with it for 70 years. It's been hard but I've done it. What choice did I have? We keep seeing on TV etc 'Help is out there's. 'Talk to someone's. People get sick if listening to you. You become 'a moaner'.
As for help being out there. Last year I finally went to pieces. My GP couldn't get me out of the surgery quick enough.

I'm not sure we've come that far from those days, when you read about how we must all get on with it...

There are two ways of looking at it. Perhaps our children are less resilient as we wanted them to have an easier life than we did and this has made them a bit soft.

But in the 'olden days' mental illness was certainly about - it was just hidden as it was not acceptable to talk about - think of the shell-shocked soldiers from WWI. They suffered terribly but were shut away, sometimes for the rest of their lives.

It's when anxiety or depression is irrational that it becomes a major problem.

I agree with you Peasblossom. Negative emotions are natural and dealing with them in some way is being resilient. It won't stop them happening and maybe people should be more sensitive to accepting that the person on the outside might not be the same as the person on the inside.

I'm not going to go into details here, but I also agree that mental health issues often happen for no apparent reason.

I do think there’s a pressure somehow to feel fine and happy all the time. It doesn’t help. It just makes people feel like failures when they feel anxious, sad, frustrated, despairing.

If something worrying is happening it’s natural to feel anxious and that’s not a mental health issue. If you lose someone you love, grief is truly the price of love. Most people, with time and support, reach acceptance. That’s resilience, if you like.

When the anxiety comes from nowhere and affects your life or the acceptance doesn’t happen, then it’s a mental health issue.

In the same way that the body will heal a cold, but if it becomes pneumonia then greater help and support is needed.

And for some mental health is something they have to battle with every day of their lives just as some are born with a physical disability.

I am always a bit bemused by the 'we were/are resilient' crowd. I worked in an elderly care home 25 years ago and the stories from the war came back and haunted a lot of people in these settings and it was heart breaking. Stiff upper lip and all that nonsense isn't helpful to anyone. Also, it's an email during a pandemic that acknowledges a lot of people may be mourning their friends and relatives and have had to part with them in unusual circumstances and haven't been able to see them after their death, dress them, plan a normal funeral. I imagine it is taking it's toll on a lot of people. Two of my friends have lost a parent to covid in the last few weeks and it is heart breaking (I have said it twice now but it is) Being resilient doesn't make you devoid of compassion either

Everyone who is around is dealing with their issues.
Some doing well, some not so well.
Some with lots of support, some with none at all.
Some with good coping strategies, some with self medication.

We can acknowledge and support everyone as best we can, although nobody likes a whinger, it's true.

Iam64 and Hetty What you've written resonates with me.

‘Deal with it’ no different to ‘pull yourself together’

I agree with you Missfoodlove.
We have to deal with what life throws at us,be it good or bad,that`s how we evolved.
No one leaves this earth un-scathed.

My father died suddenly when I was 8, and I was packed off to school with a note. The day of the funeral was spent with a family that I didn't know. In the 50s, children's grief was not acknowledged, nor was being moved away from all their friends.
Whilst I understand all that my mother went through, there is also part of me that screams ' help that child'
Yes, I got on with it, but at what cost to my physical health later in life. Others see me as a strong, capable person, who you can lean on, but honestly, not much choice was there.
I agree that there is mental illness that requires medical intervention as would a physical illness. I believe that there is also mental distress and trauma that also needs intervention, and this is at monumental levels at the moment. Time is a great healer, and many will gradually recover when things get back to some kind of normal. For others, it will take more to help them get their lives back.
As for Mother's Day, well that has become just another selling machine that causes so much distress for many.
Nice that the supermarket acknowledges that this will be extra difficult this year. Shame we can't turn down the volume on all of these 'special days'