As many as one in four adults in the United Kingdom suffer from some sort of mental illness but for a lot of those adults they suffer in silence, worried about the repercussions of telling the truth.
Surprisingly, or not, mental health is very much a taboo subject between trainee and young doctors. This highly competitive environment expects these young people to be on their game when it comes to caring for others they fall short when it comes to caring for themselves. The fear of being considered unfit to work or raising safety concerns with patients silences their voices. With more and more young doctors suffering burn out early on in their careers they often turn to stimulants to keep them going, masking any mental health issues that are lying beneath the surface.
Asians have embraced cultural differences across the globe as they have migrated from their native countries and set up life elsewhere but the age-old stigma that mental illness carries still has a firm hold, both at home and overseas.
Asian culture has deep roots in Confucianism, which focuses on education as a means of attaining worth and status and stresses the importance of correct behaviour, loyalty to family and obedience to hierarchy. A recent study into the mental health needs of young Asians found that they still feel the weight of Confucianism with many admitting to feeling under extreme pressure to achieve both academically and professionally so ignore signs of mental illness because they fear it will derail their progress. In Asian culture the idea that a person’s value is directly related to their ability to support and care for family members is ingrained from birth so focus is targeted at achieving this rather than disclosing “self-indulgent” mental health issues. All this means that Asians are less likely than any other ethnicity to seek out help for their mental health making it still a highly taboo subject.
In British culture keeping a “stiff upper lip” and the idea that every problem can be solved with a nice cup of tea is how our older generation was raised, so getting rid of the taboo of mental health discussion in this demographic will probably be the hardest nut to crack. We can only hope that walls are broken down enough by the upcoming generations to allow for mind closing taboos to be irradicated.
As young boys grow up it is all too common to hear phrases such as “big boys don’t cry” and “man-up” – these throw- away, yet destructive, comments reinforce the idea that expressing emotion is not a masculine thing to do and as a result three times as many men die of suicide than women! A lot has been done to encourage men to open up, with people like Prince Harry and Tyson Fury both openly sharing their own experiences and struggles but for many men it is still a taboo subject.
As someone who has had the privilege of spending time in therapy, mental health is not a taboo subject for me and I am lucky to have like-minded people around me. I would encourage anyone and everyone to open up to the idea that without our mental health we don’t have our health. If we are physically unwell we take time to mend and get well, why not do the same for our minds? Mental wellbeing should not be the privilege of a few but the right of everyone. Get sharing, get listening and get open-minded.
