I’ll admit, I’m guilty of this as well. Giving all of this information to you all and a lot of it is the wrong way of looking at things from a mental health perspective. After taking time to take more classes outside of school and go for certifications, my whole perspective on mental health has changed. I guarantee after reading this, your perspective will change as well.
How did I get a hold of this new perspective of things?
Well, the answer is fairly simple. For me, it was when I went through a certification course regarding Trauma and becoming a Support Specialist. This course showed me that a lot of the information that’s been given out has been wrong.
Actually, a better way of putting it would be… The system in which we view mental health is wrong.
Let me give you an illustration of what I mean.
How Mental Health Is Taught
Normally, people don’t learn about mental health in school unless they are in college and go for a degree in a psychology-related field. If you did not take psychology or a field related to it, don’t worry. You didn’t miss much. Generally, you learn about different theories related to psychology and do a lot of research on the topic.
If you go a more traditional counseling or therapy route then you will learn about those theories and why they are used for mental health disorders. Learning about theories is fine, it’s more of how people view mental health that’s the problem.
When you’re learning about these things, you are informed about learning the symptoms of mental health disorders and what different techniques work to help people overcome those problems.
This information sounds great, but in fact, it’s this perspective that’s doing more of a disservice. There’s a reason why we care more about mental health, but people are getting worse. How come so much has moved forward within the field, but more and more people are experiencing problems? We’re viewing things from the wrong perspective.
This is the normal perspective we all have. If someone is going through a lot of mental health problems, we look at the symptoms, find out what potential disease or disorder they have, and what method of counseling or therapy works best for them.
The Problem With This Perspective
The problem with this is that we view the person through what their problems are and what they are going through instead of actually seeing them as a person. If someone has depression, we look at it and see what works for someone that has depression. What symptoms do they have and how do we get rid of them? This sounds like a valid question, but it leaves out one key piece of information.
How did this feeling of depression start to begin with?
When I say that, I’m not talking about therapy where you look deep into a person’s past to find the root cause of the problem. In fact, you don’t really need that because biology will give you enough information.
The true answer to that question involves biology and the different systems in our body that revolves around survival.
How Mental Health Should Be Taught
One of the things that should be taught is the biology around why we may engage in certain behaviors and the result of them. There are two key systems in our bodies that are geared around survival. These are the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). These two systems explain a lot of the behaviors that we engage in whenever our body is unregulated.
Think of unregulated as a state in which we are triggered or deeply affected by something. Whenever an event occurs that gets us unregulated, we can react in two different ways.
Unregulated States (Fight or Flight)
If our Sympathetic Nervous System is activated, we can have action behaviors that are associated with it:
- Anger/Aggression
- Hostile, Defensive, Impulsive
- Irrational/Lack of self-control
- Self-centered
- Inability to stay focused, sleep problems
- Anxiety, and more
In addition to action behaviors, our Sympathetic Nervous System can have passive behaviors when activated:
- Freezing (shock)
- Body Shuts Down
- Inability to take action
- Compulsive Behavior
- Suicidal Ideation
- Addictions
- Withdrawn/Isolated
- Self-Centered, and more
For most of you, you’ve probably seen someone with those behaviors and you guessed that something was wrong with them. Well, in fact, most of those behaviors are normal when someone is in this kind of state.
The solution to this is not getting rid of the symptoms or problematic behaviors.
It’s to get that person out of that unregulated state. If we can keep people regulated, then they are better suited to deal with their problems.
Why Is This Information Missing In Education?
There are a few reasons to explain why this information is missing. In fact, some of this information gets taught, but it’s a very small lecture or lesson that isn’t covered in detail. The first reason is that this information is not based on the current model that we use when looking at mental health.
The common mental health model used is the medical model which primarily looks at symptoms and what we can do to get rid of the symptoms. If we get rid of the symptoms, then the person is okay. The problem with this viewpoint is that it’s not looking at the problem from a person’s perspective. It’s looking at it from a societal perspective.
- How can we help this person overcome their problem so they can get back to society?
- How can we fix these symptoms so they can function normally in society?
In reality, this model boils down to this one question
What is the quickest way to get rid of someone’s symptoms without really solving the problem?
Moving Forward With Mental Health
As you can see, there are many different problems with this. How many people you know are still taking medications for issues that happened years ago? How many people that when they’re no longer on medication, go back to how they were feeling before they first took it or even worse? So many unanswered questions with this model and a lot to not be desired.
One day, I hope we can stay away from this outdated model and focus on things that will actually produce better results. Results that actually help people and not keep them numb to the pain. People get stronger by overcoming their issues, not by suppressing them. So why are we using a model that suppresses pain and makes people not overcome their issues? Make it make sense!
