Matthew Morris has written this blog for MITUK. He is an Emotional First Aid Trainer and Developer has a workshop in conjunction with AD4E on February 26th. Details below.
Watching the news in the last few weeks and hearing the discussions about the soaring numbers of people off work due to emotional distress, I noticed that politicians were referring to those people as “having mental health.” Something that I thought we were all supposed to have! We are told, often, that we all have physical health, and we all have mental health. This is repeated so frequently that it is an idea that most people think is a universal truth.
What do they mean when they say, “these people have mental health,” and that is why they are unable to work? My interpretation is that the problem lies in the term being inadequate for capturing the breadth of a person’s emotional world. Insufficient to include the diversity that exists across the planet. Too specifically orientated towards a clinical perspective of our very real emotional suffering.
If you ask people why they or others struggle emotionally, the most common answer is that the reasons are rooted in their lives and experiences. The things that have happened or are happening to them. If you ask people whether those feelings mean that they or others are ill, or unhealthy, most say no. So, why do we use mental health as the umbrella term for our emotional distress?
Around the world there are cultures and beliefs that have evolved over thousands of years. Ways of explaining and understanding the world, ways of structuring communities, responding to the needs of people, and ways of understanding human emotions and suffering. Ideas and beliefs that sit alongside mental health as more possibilities when it comes to explaining human emotions. As for many people and cultures, it would be absurd to ignore the events of people’s lives and, instead, assert that people are ill with no objective evidence to support a doctor’s opinion. Which is why, in creating our new training Emotional First Aid, we adopt emotional wellbeing as our canopy for all ideas and possibilities to shelter under.
Emotional First Aid makes the first aid you, while also encouraging employers who are increasingly employing mental health first aid, to give all their staff the knowledge, skills, awareness, and support, to self-care. It aims to create cultures that are emotionally intelligent and supportive, utilising a growing body of evidence that shows how adopting such an approach improves productivity and success, as well as having happy work environments – and moving away from reactive approaches that seek to diagnose and single out people who are struggling.
If I were to ask for help regarding my feelings, I would be uncomfortable with doing so from services and people who work using ‘mental health’ as their description for my issues. I would be particularly confused, angry, and frustrated if they then told me that they were person centered, or trauma informed, or recovery orientated, or how they listen to the lived experience of people using their services. Because they would not be doing any of these things for me if they used the term mental health. For me, logically, no service that calls itself a mental health service can be person centered, or trauma informed. If it would not work for me, then I am sure I am not alone.
I appreciate that I probably am in a minority of people who feel uncomfortable with that term, and who is unhappy with mental health being a catch all term for human emotion, but I don’t think I am completely alone. I believe that if people were given a choice, if they knew where the term mental health came from, and were given the time to consider what is most helpful for them and their loved ones, they would prefer to find another way of talking about our emotional worlds.
My issues with the term mental health are many. From a purely logical perspective, using the term health implies that to struggle emotionally means you are potentially unwell. I do not believe that emotions that are caused by the struggles of living are manifestations of illness or disorder. Rather the consequences of the things that are either happening or have happened. It is my understanding of the ever-increasing amount of evidence, that the link between life events and emotional distress is so much clearer than evidence of biological disorder or disease.
My argument is that whether you agree with me or not, there is sufficient doubt to agree to disagree on whether there are biological causes of distress. Sufficient doubt to agree that we need to find a term that does not use the word health, if we are to truly be person centered, or trauma informed.
If you use a computer search engine, or its AI, to ask where the term mental health came from you may get an answer like this, as I did, I asked the question “What is the origin of the term mental health?”
“The term “mental health” has its roots in the concept of “mental hygiene,” which was first coined by William Sweetser in the mid-19th century. This term was used to describe the practice of maintaining mental well-being and preventing mental illness. Isaac Ray, a founder of the American Psychiatric Association, further defined mental hygiene as the art of preserving the mind against influences that could deteriorate its qualities.
The modern understanding of mental health as a field of study and practice began to take shape in the early 20th century, with significant contributions from figures like Clifford Beers, who founded the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in 1908. This movement aimed to improve conditions for people with mental illnesses and promote mental well-being through education and advocacy.”
Looking at mental hygiene, it is interesting that it appears to have started with a more holistic perspective on what causes people to experience emotional distress.
“The management of the bodily powers in regard to exercise, rest, food, clothing and climate, the laws of breeding, the government of the passions, the sympathy with current emotions and opinions, the discipline of the intellect—all these come within the province of mental hygiene.” (Rossi, A., Some Pre-World War II Antecedents of Community Mental Health Theory and Practice. Mental Hygiene, 1962, 46, 78-98).
The Realization of an Idea by Dr. Wallace Mandell – Johns Hopkins Bloomburg School of Public Health
What however started with an apparently broad understanding of how the whole of a person’s life impacts their emotions, appears to have become focused more specifically on, “the laws of breeding” and “the discipline of the intellect”, with these being part of the eugenics movement. A movement that is defined as.
“The practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations’ genetic composition”
“In 1883 Francis Galton, in England, coined the term “eugenics” to encompass the idea of modification of natural selection through selective breeding for the improvement of humankind” (Merriam Webster)
Mental Hygiene, and the idea that “inferior” genetic material was the cause for suffering, gave rise to forced sterilisation and other “interventions” that are rightly condemned today. They ignored the political realities of people’s lives that meant that they were experiencing poverty, deprivation, with a lack of opportunity, and that groups of people that were marginalised suffered due to discrimination and abuse. Imagine that! A concept of human suffering that ignores the political and social realities of their lives!
For me, the term mental health is, at best, a belief system. The world of human emotion is overflowing with theories, beliefs, interventions and possibilities, but very few certainties and facts. In my career I have always tried to respect everyone’s right to their beliefs, and at the same time endeavoured to hold true to my own. I therefore have respect for those that hold to a belief that some human suffering is predominantly a biological issue. I particularly respect those people who describe how this approach has helped them. Over the years I have heard so many stories about what people believe, what has helped them and how they have overcome what they were experiencing, with all of them being so varied and specific to each person and their unique lives.
In Emotional First Aid we seek to honour and respect everyone’s right to make their own sense of themselves and their world. It is a celebration of the incredible complexity and capacity of human beings. It seeks to demonstrate to people how, by being human and living a life, they already have so many strengths and capabilities when it comes to affecting their emotions. Encouraging the creation of cultures that provide people with safety and connection. Qualities that help to switch off our bodies threat responses and return it to optimum functioning.
So far, the training has been very well received with 100% of people saying that they would recommend it to others. One of our collaborators in creating the training Dr Jacqui Dillon has described the training as; “Emotional First Aid is an integration of Trauma Informed Approaches and the Power Threat Meaning Framework into an innovative support package for the workplace and learning environments and a powerful alternative to medicalised approaches.”
If you would like to discover more about our training and spend some time under the shelter of our canopy, please join us for a workshop that we are doing in conjunction with A Disorder 4 Everyone. An organisation that has galvanised and provided a home for discussion, information, people’s stories and a community that lets me know that I am not alone and where together we can return mental health to the umbrella stand, and to being just one idea amongst many.
On February 26th, AD4E workshop with Matthew ‘An Introduction to Emotional First Aid’
Mad in the UK hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.