Mental Health Awareness Month 2024

It's the last day of Mental Health Awareness Month, thank goodness! The UK is mental health obsessed, especially since the pandemic. One recent example is  this LibDem poster making the rounds. 

There are more important things to address, like making sure people have a decent place to live so they can lead flourishing lives and enjoy good health; nutritious food to eat for their physical well-being; and enough money to live a dignified life important for their emotional well-being. 

Universal Basic Income would be better money spent than the money the government wastes on all manner of unnecessary projects. Hitting a certain industry with extra tax to raise money to compensate for their poor governing isn't a solution. That's all politicians come up with. They spend their time thinking who can we heavily tax next? 🤔💷💰

How about sorting out antisemitism (and homophobia, transphobia, racism and poverty) in universities and wider society. Mental Health will immediately improve if you do this and create a compassionate, egalitarian society where all can flourish not just the few! Otherwise, you're not living up to this year's moto for Mental Health Awareness: #NoMindLeftBehind! 

Furthermore, addressing LGBTQIA+ issues within the context of mental health should not start putting all the focus on LGBTQIAPD2S+ people, which runs the risk of depicting them as prone to psychological abnormalities, especially since it's not made clear that any issues they may experience are almost always a natural reaction to the hate speech, hate crime and discrimination they suffer. There's never any mention that the homophobic, transphobic and genderphobic people are unstable themselves, otherwise they wouldn't be capable of such hatred and bigotry. 

When someone has a different phobia, such as arachnophobia, you don't try to give spiders conversion therapy to stop them being spiders 🕷️  so they don't potentially trigger arachnophobes! No, you provide therapy for the arachnophobes so they stop being phobic of spiders! 

Strong phobias that illicit such aversions and repulsion can be categorised as a phobia that constitutes a mental health disorder or condition. So why suddenly superimpose the mental health disorders onto the source of their phobia, the LGBTQ+ people, and start foisting so-called conversion therapy onto them? That's as illogical as treating the spider for being a spider! And frankly, this is simply because LGBT+ people and intersex people merely show society, politics and religion that gender and sexuality have always existed on a spectrum, which is inconvenient for some countries' ideology that labels any natural variations beyond 100% heterosexual, 100% cisgender and 100% biologically male or female as abnormal. 

This month, I was horrified to see that even Stonewall fell into perpetuating the stereotype that LGBT+ people are somehow simply more prone to mental health problems and struggle more, without any explanation of how this is, in some cases, artificially and deliberately triggered by bigots, and in other cases, is just exaggerated and distorted. You can never simply make generic statements, no matter how much you base it on some statistics, because plain data never tells us the full story, as research methods in some fields of science and the social sciences, especially psychology and sociology, always teach.  

Gay people are not more susceptible to mental health issues. That's a trope. It's the harassment and discrimination LGBTQ are on the receiving end of that affects them and may cause distress. Get rid of the harassment, discrimination and hate speech and all will be well. Treat it at the source. Stop foisting nonsense on individual LGBTQ people. 

When, for example, you call a switchboard you're looking for practical help and/or ideas on how to solve a situation you have suddenly encountered. I called LGBT+ Switchboard about my situation at BBK and a lovely gay guy answered and we chatted about my practical options. Nothing to do with discussing mental health, with him or anyone else!! 

As we end the month of May, we begin June - so Happy upcoming Pride Month! 

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