“Because I wanted to” is my response to another mental health professional asking why I have self-harmed. They’re looking for a deeper reason, one that’s in the textbooks, one that explains I’m ‘irrational’ and ‘not right in the head’. It couldn’t possibly be that I am in control of my own actions and this is what I want to do. This behaviour must be pathologised because it has no function to society.
I often say I have ‘controversial’ opinions about mental health, ones that have distanced me from the mainstream sector. The scariest and most radical comment is one that I feel totally neutral about: I think it’s understandable to be suicidal. And I don’t think it’s a bad option.
Admitting this makes me panic. I feel I should caveat that everyone deserves help and that people shouldn’t have to get to that place. That I too have been bereaved by suicide. If you have faced the depths of despair and come out the other side glad to still be here, I’m happy for you. I would love that for everyone. But those are the stories we see and are told to aspire to. Those of us who don’t feel like that are hidden, forced into shame until we too must have the realisation that life should always be worth living. When asked by professionals why I haven’t taken my own life, I give the same cold answer: I haven’t guaranteed a way out yet.
Alongside my neutrality to self-harm and suicidality stands what I feel is a bolder claim: having poor mental health is a saner approach to the world we live in.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines mental health as “a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn and work well, and contribute to their community”. The definition is unsurprisingly capitalistic, focusing on factors of work and contribution, the classic means of production. We must cope with the stresses of life and fulfil our wildest dreams, or else we have failed. We have not done enough to be grateful for this life and we should cope like everyone else. It’s okay not to be okay if it’s temporary and quickly remedied, getting you to return to work and not disrupt the state. But good mental health seems unobtainable and unrealistic. Should I not feel despair at the rising acceptability of fascism? Is it my fault that I can’t “cope better” with continued oppression? Can I still “realise my abilities” when my disabled body writhes in pain, taking them away each day?
Unsurprisingly, my views and beliefs have made it difficult for me to work in the mental health charity sector. While there are things we can all do to make our lives easier, it is not our fault to not want to exist, or to not cope well in an insane world. And behind the scenes, the sector perpetuates the same harms. Charities are meant to exist to serve a need, but they also need money to function. This creates a hidden sinister dichotomy of charities being run like businesses, fuelled by corporate toxicity. I have experienced and witnessed racism, ableism and transphobia across the sector. A leading mental health charity is known by many as one of the worst for it, a fact which continues to surprise those outside of the sector when they learn how traumatic it is to work there. We are all unhappy, yet we’re churning out the same false narratives to each other.
There are many of us who can’t exist within the inauthenticity of the sector. We are at the mercy of another corrupt system, one that can mask discriminatory leaders as “good people” simply because they work in a charity. Impartiality is being enforced more than ever and we are told to just do our job, leave politics outside the workplace and services. I refuse to suggest white-washed mindfulness when we are witnessing genocide. I am not allowed to say the infamous six sessions of CBT will not placate the hopelessness stemmed from our leaders bombing children.
Our distress is necessary. Our distress is our humanity. It shouldn’t be desensitised or fixed. We are interconnected to the world around us and that is where our problems and solutions reside. Yet, we will continue to be told it is our individual fault — if only we could just think about things differently. For those of us that can’t or won’t, the only treatment left is blame and another dose of oppression. The world we have created is a hard one to survive, but it is not impossible. I am not here to say there should be an absence of any joy or meaning in life. But we need to approach things in a different way. Resistance in existing and activism against systems are what we have already done and must continue to do. Our shame can transform into a kind of empowerment they could never have imagined. We must be a witness to what is happening, however uncomfortable or unpleasant. We must not deny the realities we are facing. We are not broken and don’t need to be fixed, we need justice and mass system change. Until then, existing in our insanity seems the most sane approach.