Few would deny the importance of removing the stigma associated with mental illness. We have been constantly trained via advertisements that such a lack of action is harmful and that we should work to end it whenever we face it.
One of these projects is Britain Gets Talking. It made a big debut on Britain's Got Talent a few years ago when anchors Ant and Dec gave viewers a minute of airtime to talk about their mental health. "See, wasn't that hard, was it?" Ant remarked at the end of the minute.
Programs like this obviously helped a large number of individuals talk about their mental health issues, particularly those who had been silent because of prejudice and discrimination.
They might, however, also promote false ideas about silence and mental illness. They convey the notion that any attempt to break the stigma around mental illness is beneficial because it interrupts the pattern of fear and stigma.
Silence in reference to mental illness really takes a variety of forms.
Many types of silence are linked to emotional disorders such as depression. In their writing, depressed individuals sometimes write of losing the ability to think and feeling helpless to speak.
Andrew Solomon, the author, recalls, for example, that he "could not come up with much." His further argument is as follows: "Words, with which I have always been familiar, seemed suddenly very complex, difficult metaphors, the usage of which took far more energy than I could possibly manage."
This aspect of depression is recognized by mental health professionals. Actually, depression is thought to have two distinct symptoms: decreased thought and speech According to certain research, silence is such a reliable sign of depression that it may be possible to develop automated systems that can detect the disorder from a person's speaking style.
Regardless of how well-meaning campaigns and others pushing you to speak may be, it may not be beneficial if you're living through this type of "depressed silence." The problem isn't that others might not be open to what you have to say or that they may not take it well after all. It's that you are silent.
In other circumstances, silence could be powerful. Some individuals who are suffering from mental illness choose not to speak up since those around them point and laugh at them or offer useless advice. They may cleverly choose to save challenging conversations for their therapist.
Such a decision may not always be prompted by stigma. Even if someone has good intent and is educated about mental health issues, that doesn't exactly make them the best person to talk about mental illness with.
Mental illness can make it feel nice to remain quiet. While some individuals struggle with speaking and thinking, others have difficulty speaking and start to think too much.
That might be the case, for example, if the individual has bipolar disorder, which causes them to experience episodes of both melancholy and mania, which are marked by irrational thinking and a need to talk all the time. For these people, moments of serious reflection can be hard, and they sometimes pay a horrifically high price for it.
These more subdued aspects of mental disorders are rarely discussed. However, psychiatrists have been aware of the advantages of silence for mental health at least since the release of Donald Winnicott's seminal article, "The Capacity to be Alone." Isolation in some form is a crucial element of mindfulness, which research has shown can reduce the development of depression.
The ideal conditions.
The aforementioned silences ought to potentially be interrupted in the appropriate situations. Since depressed silence appears to be a symptom of depression, the patient may need to overcome it as part of their recovery with the aid of a mental healthcare professional. Similar to this, even if someone is enjoying their tranquil solitude in treatment, it could be beneficial to disturb it.
Despite the encouragement of a celebrity on television, many people won't find those situations with their family, friends, or coworkers, for whatever reason. The truth is that it may be quite difficult to discuss mental health issues, even with those who care about and support us. Sometimes stigma is to blame, other times it isn't.
Of course, we should keep working to make it simpler for people to speak openly about their mental health issues in the appropriate context. However, we need to stop using language that forces individuals to speak up without taking into account their reasons for doing so or if speaking will benefit them.
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