The mental healthedemic.

[Workingman]

Stories about fears for our mental health abound - they are inescapable.

School pupils are dropping like flies because they missed a few months in class. Students are in angst because they might not get home for Christmas. "Woe is me, my holiday / birthday party / concert was cancelled".

If we don't get hugs and kisses or go to the shops or visit places or get a haircut or buy some new (insert item here) we are all going to go mad.

When and how did we all become so emotionally weak?

All the stories appear to be making matters worse as everyone "empathises" with everyone else. We have entered a period of collective social mania and, of course, the mental health experts are clamouring for funds to mitigate the impending future disaster. To me they are actually feeding the problem.

We need to get over ourselves.

[Kaz]

Harsh. I would expel little more empathy from you Frank, a lot of people are struggling with an unprecedented situation.

[miasmum]

I do agree with you Frank, I think we are nurturing a real snowflake generation.

I feel for the elderly that are isolated, and frightened and those with businesses on the brink of collapse, those I genuinely feel for.

But the younger generation are being brought up to feed off the culture that expects somebody to make everything better for everybody. Sometimes there is no making it better, you have to learn to live with, adapt and grow a pair.....

Sorry school of hard knocks is where I went. Where you put your big girl pants on and got on with it

[cromwell]

I can see both sides. Some schoolkids are drama queens, always have been. But there does seem to be an anxiousness industry that is always being quoted by the TV news, and imo this encourages self introspection.
Also a few years ago in schools an initiative called PSED was introduced. This stands for Personal, Social and Emotional Development.
A big part of PSED was self confidence and self awareness and managing feelings and relationships.
Many teachers in this country (including MrsC) thought this was going to be counter productive. Indeed in America where PSED originated there had already been warnings that making children concentrate on themselves and asking if they were happy might be overly stressing developing young minds.
And imo she was right and encouraging self introspection and constantly questioning if you are all right is going to lead in an unnecessary rise in anxiety in children, and we are seeing the results of PSED right now.

When and how did we all become so emotionally weak?

Tbh Frank I think it is official policy to encourage us to be cry babies, and it has been for years. The people who run the country don't want a population of bright, inquiring minds. They want a population of docile dependents.
You can see this most plainly in the fallacy that it is only the government that can "keep you safe". The more people believe that - and it is pushed at you all the time - the more people become frightened and dependent.
It also leads to an erosion of personal liberties. Give up your right to own a pistol - it will keep you safe. No bad things will ever happen again. Give up your right to free speech - it encourages dangerous racism and that is dangerous.
You mustn't "take the law into your own hands" as it is the governments job to keep you safe from crims. Given the police cuts this is a fairly obvious lie, but there you go.

All the stories appear to be making matters worse as everyone "empathises" with everyone else. We have entered a period of collective social mania and, of course, the mental health experts are clamouring for funds to mitigate the impending future disaster. To me they are actually feeding the problem.

Yes, and they are doing it deliberately to big themselves up.
Empathy is an interesting one. I read once that the only feeling that should be occuring to us re migrants was empathy. That we should just feel sorry for them.
This is a great get out for politicians if they can manage it.
It is akin to taking your brain out, putting it into a box, locking the box and handing the keys to a politician.
No thank you.
I had an on line conversation with someone who refused to believe that if we let in 500,000 people per year, that it would have any effect on the need for housing. Absolutely refused to admit it. Why? Because such an attitude might be racist, and racism is bad.
So the conditioned response (racism is bad) trumps the rational thought of the law of supply and demand.
Just be empathetic.

Right! All that said there are people who are struggling. One of our neighbours lost her husband recently. She has a great attitude, but she does get down and she is dreading the thought of not being able to see her family at Christmas if we get a lockdown.
The people who are struggling are probably mostly like that. Good people who have followed the rules but still get threatened with draconian penalties that affect the ordinary small pleasures which make their lives worth living.
People who are separated from, or who fear being separated from, their children and grandchildren; people whose only conversation is with a shop assistant. People who have been scared witless by the relentless doom and gloom coming out of the TV and papers for the last seven months.
I have a lot of sympathy for them. For the "Oooh, people don't understand - I have anxiety" brigade, not so much.

[miasmum]

Agree with you Crommers especially your last paragraph. I once had to refer someone for counselling, they were 18 and hadn't got the job they thought they should have got? Thats called life, you don't need counselling you need to grow up. But the GP wouldn't say that, they just referred them for counselling Why are we so scared of saying things?

[Suff]

People who are ex services find it very hard to understand this "helplessness". The inability to help yourself, for 95% of people, is down to a lack of expectations.

My father tells amusing stories of dodging flying bombs whilst playing on the streets of London. This is the country of people we used to be. Yes there were always a subset of people who simply couldn't cope, but life wasn't easy and everyone grew up knowing that.

Today life IS easy. The easier it becomes the higher the barrier to discomfort becomes.

Is it any wonder at all that when the barrier falls, those who have been cosseted all their lives suddenly don't have a clue what is going on?

I find this echo when I watch the progress of the Tesla factory in Brandenburg state, Berlin. The "Environmentalists" have had decades of stopping anything which they don't agree with. Just make a complaint and your nice green trees (grown to be harvested for cardboard), won't be cut down and replaced with a damned great big factory. They were confident, they raised hundreds of objections.

They were stunned when they were summarily and figuratively, thrown out on their ear with their coat and bags thrown on top of them. They can't understand. They have never experienced hardship in this way and the fact that the factory is going to, eventually, produce 40,000 jobs in a depressed area hammered by Covid, does not seem to have penetrated their shell of "rightness".

Que people standing around Germany shellshocked that they can't get their own way. It is similar to what we see in the UK today.

[Workingman]

Harsh. I would expel little more empathy from you Frank, a lot of people are struggling with an unprecedented situation.

Sorry, Kaz, it was not meant to be harsh as I was hoping more for "objective." You are right people are struggling, and that is a much better description of what people are going through.

I wasn't particularly having a go at the people and their struggles, my observation was largely aimed at the professionals and media presenting those struggles as some sort of mental illness / issue. Or should I say "a precursor to mental illness". The others have put it much better than I did.

Throughout history people have been sad, angry, forlorn, happy and worried, and so long as those things do not become a permanent state of mind they are perfectly normal and healthy emotions.

In the present situation there are many real reasons to be fearful and some individuals will be pushed to the brink: and beyond. They do need our help and support. What we do not need are minor worries being turned into major disasters in people's minds and thus creating mental health issues down the line, but that is what the media and some mental health professionals and services are doing. For the vast majority of us these people are creating mountains out of mole hills.

[TheOstrich]

I think Crommers summed it up very well. There is no doubt that a lot of people are suffering mental health problems at the moment, we can see it all around us; that is driven to the strangeness of our current times. But at the same time, we have over the last 30-40 years gradually become a soft, flabby nation where such feelings are almost endorsed and encouraged. I don't particularly see a conspiracy theory over this, but I do see too many Talking Heads and People Pushing Agendas, in all walks of life including the two huge no-go areas of racism and sexuality.

Suff spoke about his father dodging flying bombs in London. I seriously worry that if we had to get involved in another war, we'd simply, as a Snowflake-orientated nation, capitulate.

[Suff]

Suff spoke about his father dodging flying bombs in London. I seriously worry that if we had to get involved in another war, we'd simply, as a Snowflake-orientated nation, capitulate.

Vodka swilling surrender monkies?? [shudder].

[Workingman]

I have just been reading an article about a global alliance of some 6,000 scientists being against lockdowns. They have "grave concerns" about the usefulness and effects of such measures and one of the first cards they play to support their position is the 'mental health' one. No proof - just throw it out there and let the tales of woe roll in.

That is the sort of thing my OP was intended to be against.