MENTAL-HEALTH awareness has come a long way in recent years.
But it can still feel like a huge step to actually ask for help when you’re struggling.
“Talking about any aspect of our health can be difficult, even if it’s physical,” says Lucy Lyus, information manager at mental-health charity, Mind.
“It is becoming much more normal to talk about mental health, but we don’t really know the words sometimes, or we might think people won’t understand.
“Once people realise they can be helped, they do talk of this massive sense of relief.
One in four people in the UK will experience a mental-health problem each year, and according to a study published in The Lancet in 2013, mental health is one of the main causes of overall disease burden globally.
In Britain, mixed anxiety and depression is the most-commonly- diagnosed mental-health problem, affecting 7.8% of the population, and is believed to account for a fifth of lost work days.
Struggles can be hidden, too, though, with people perhaps not taking time off work, and keeping up appearances on social media and appearing fine.
Things like denial, fear of judgement or even just fear of what will happen if you open the floodgates, so to speak, can play a part.
But there can also be uncertainty as to whether people “qualify” for professional help.
“No problem is too small or unimportant,” Lucy states.
People can, however, be disappointed with the outcome of plucking up the courage to talk to their GP — postcode lotteries and funding shortages mean waiting lists for counselling can be long.
This is something Mind is campaigning about, along with better training for GPs and practice nurses around handling conversations about mental health.
“We want to make sure there is choice for everyone, in terms of getting the treatment that’s right for them,” adds Lucy.
“Antidepressants can be fantastic, but they’re not appropriate for all folk.”
Acknowledging you need support is one thing, but getting through the GP surgery door and finding the words can be quite another.
Mind’s “Find the Words” tool — an online resource for people visiting their doctor or nurse, as well as those working in GP practices and primary- care commissioners — is designed to help with this very thing.
“This is a campaign we’ve done to give people the tools to start the conversation with their GP,” explains Lucy.
And if talking to your GP really isn’t what you want to do, “talking to anyone is a really good thing to do”.
“That could be a friend, a colleague, a family member. Someone you trust, who you know will listen non-judgmentally, just so you’re not feeling like you’ve got to suffer in silence,” she says.
“If you don’t have that, a lot of people find online-support forums useful.
“We all have mental health, so we need to remember having a mental-health problem is very common. We all need support from time to time.”
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