Our Mental Health Revolution
We are witnessing the first shots in what will become a mental health revolution in humanity.
It wasn’t long ago when mental health was stigmatized by broad swathes of the population. Disclosing that you were seeing a therapist would make people sheepish. Openly discussing your mental health issues was seen as a vast act of courage, and unfortunately sometimes was demeaned, bemoaned, or stigmatized. Even finding someone who knew how to empathize with mental health issues are far and few between (I would argue it’s still fairly difficult to find this today).
Of all the vast changes the COVID-19 pandemic has had on humanity’s existence, perhaps no greater shift has been in the outlook and perspective on mental health. Silo’ed from friends and family, left face-to-face with your own mortality for months on end, human beings could no longer run from the fact: what happens in your mind is important, and it shapes how you feel, behave, think, and live. Rates of mental illness went through the roof during the pandemic (and are still rising in many parts of the country today). Mental health-focused technology companies soared in valuation as employers fumbled to understand the problem and support their people.
Present day. Billboards for seeing therapists abound. Instagram ads featuring celebrities discussing the importance of mental health. The younger generations using their voice to amplify the importance of mental health and destigmatize it. Slowly, employers adapting and supporting their employees.
Make no mistake — what we are living through now is the beginning of what will become a mental health revolution in humanity.
Mental health goes well beyond diagnosable disorders and psychological conditions. Sure, anxiety, depression, psychosis, etc., is what we typically associate with mental health. That is all technically accurate as they are diagnosable mental health disorders. But there’s a much larger frame of mind for mental health that we are only beginning to understand and iterate on: the ideal framework of thinking about yourself, your feelings, your experiences, your conflicts, your challenges — in other words, your life. Meta cognition — or thinking about the way you think — has surged in popularity as folks seek to understand how the way they think impacts their life and fulfillment therefrom. Cognitive behavioral therapy — or CBT — has been shown to be one of the most effective treatments for anxiety, depression, and countless other mental illnesses. And make no mistake, CBT is just a fancy term for (i) thinking about the way you think, (ii) understanding why some thought patterns can be harmful, and (iii) redirecting your thoughts in a way that is more rational, logical, and in tune with what you believe. If you’re reading this, you may wonder, “I feel happy and like things are going well. I don’t think I would really benefit from meta cognition.” Sounds reasonable, but here’s the catch: you do not know what you do not know, and unbeknownst to you, you may have thought patterns that could be improved and tweaked to make you more rational, happier, more in tune with yourself, and more fulfilled in life. Isn’t improvement the name of the game, anyway?
There’s mounting evidence of the many ways that the brain is a muscle. Every neural pathway in your brain (every thought, every thought pattern) is a muscle, and we are quickly learning of the power that just like any other muscle in the human body, if you exercise these neural pathways, they will become stronger (this is the basis of neuroplasticity). Meta cognition, previously relegated to the arenas of philosophers and psychology, will become a household term as humanity learns how to unpack its own thinking and improve on it.
So let’s reset. Right now it’s 2021 and rates of mental illness are skyrocketing across the board. Resources are being poured into the industry at a rockets pace. Thought leaders are emerging and spreading the word. But make no mistake — in the war of humanity against mental illness, we are in the phase of only now learning that we are getting massacred by the illnesses, and beginning to triage our resources to help those most in need (and of those most in need, only those who have resources). This revolution in mindfulness, body-mind connection, and meta cognition is just getting started. The more focused and aware we become of these issues, the more categorizations we will create — the more problems we will learn to diagnose (for myself, high functioning severe anxiety is not yet recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders even though I can personally attest that it is very real), and the more help we will provide. But right now, we are learning that we have been blind and are only taking off the blindfolds for the first time.
When I was an undergraduate in college I attended a talk by a victim of human trafficking. She spoke of how her parents were the ones who sold her into the human trafficking market. A daughter of asian immigrants who did well in school in a moderately affluent suburb, she had a very important lesson: no matter what the number of recorded victims of human trafficking is, you must always add at least one more to that number, because folks like her flew under the radar of the most commonly cited/estimated human trafficking demographics. The same logic applies to mental health.
I personally feel as though I fell through the cracks. Valedictorian of my high school, 3-year graduate with an above 4.0 GPA from Berkeley, and graduate from Harvard Law School at age 24, I was the poster child for success. Not only that, I was very good with people. I’ve had several long term relationships, a very tight-knit friend group, and I’m very good at meeting new people and charming them. Nonetheless, the whole time — and I mean the whole time — I was trapped in my own mind, a victim of severe anxiety that had distorted my sense of reality for my entire adult life in ways I truly never understood until I sought help. Let me make one thing clear — I listened to what the world was saying about mental health. I was no stranger to stress and the impacts it can have on your body. And still, despite how much I was suffering, I never truly understood or knew how my mental illness was destroying my fulfillment in life. I received only positive reinforcement for my behavior from our society — great grades, friends who loved me, and a high paying job. Not once did the system check in on me, analyze my thinking, and tell me flatly: you need to work on this. I was the demographic that flew under the radar for mental health records/numbers, and I suffered for 27 years of my life because of it. So no matter how you feel about mental health in general or even your own mental health, understand one thing: no matter what the recorded number of cases of mental illness is out there — you must always know that there is one more case than that number. I would argue, there are tens of millions more cases than what we currently know and record today.
Thankfully, the system of checks and balances on the way that we think is changing. We are on the forefront of what will become our generation’s war on mental illness and idealization of meta cognition. More self-help content is being generated by the hour on social media than ever before, and will only continue to grow. The knowledge that we have of neuroscience is vastly accelerating. This knowledge will hopefully help others issue spot their own mental health, but we have a long way to go before the system proactively checks in on folks’ ways of thinking. Right now, the dangerous reality of this battle is that we are still requiring the person suffering to take the first step to seek help — and for folks like me who were ignorant of these issues, it’s a catch 22: I’m not going to seek help if I don’t know anything is wrong.
Think about the way you think. Check in on people you may think (or even who you do not suspect) are suffering. And most importantly — saddle up. This revolution is not going to be won easily, without further casualties from mental illnesses, and without patience. This is only the beginning.
