World Mental Health Day

Apparently it’s World Mental Health Day today.

These days anything that has its own day automatically makes me feel a bit scratchy and growlsome.

There have always been special days for things, usually dictated by the church. Not just the big ones like Easter and Christmas, but Pentecost and Shrove days, Souls and Saints days, days when you can eat fish and days when you can eat nothing. Some of the days go way back beyond organised religion to leafy glades and mistletoe, stones and solstices, fire and water. Big, gnarly fuck off primitive days of awe and wonder when anyone could be a saint because frankly if you made it past the age of twenty five and could weave your own socks, you were a wizard.

Now we live in a secular society, albeit one still dogged by the same superstition that had us burning witches and worshipping smelly old men who chose to live in bee skeps. You only have to look at David Icke’s theory that the royal family are lizard people to know how little we have progressed.

These days we no longer celebrate the patron saint of plumbers (St. Vincent Ferrer in case you were wondering), but we have days to celebrate everything else. As well as being World Mental Health Day, it is also National Angel Food Cake Day. Tomorrow is National Take Your Parents To Lunch Day.

There has to be something to keep Hallmark in business.

It is this that makes me roar my terrible roar, gnash my terrible teeth, roll my terrible eyes and show my terrible claws. It is not that I think that we shouldn’t be more aware of mental health. Of course we should. It’s that so much of this stuff is performative rather than meaningful. So much of it is about what the company or the brand get out of it and not what actually benefits people who are genuinely struggling with their mental health. World Mental Health Day is something people who have to regularly post material on Linkedin get excited about because it gives them the perfect opportunity to write a post that makes them look empathetic and kind, not because they necessarily are empathetic and kind.

As I have written so many times before on this day, it is no good highlighting mental health on one day a year, when for the remaining 364 days a year people are being failed at every turn by the very people who post a picture of themselves looking concerned on a pastel sofa every October 10th.

If my son’s school, who have a nice bench for people who feel a bit sad to sit on, had done more than buy a fucking chair, maybe my son wouldn’t have spent two years mourning his friend in suicidal gloom while the head of house reported him to social services for truancy. In the past fortnight alone I’ve had two friends pick up the pieces for their kids because they’ve lost people they loved to suicide. That’s the reality of mental health.

It doesn’t take much to really help. A listening ear. An acceptance of other people’s right to live their lives in a way that isn’t all about what makes you feel comfortable. A question: ‘what can I do to help you?’ instead of: ‘You know what you need?’ The ability to check in on more than a performative level. The knowledge that what is good for you isn’t always good for someone else. The ability to hold space for someone so they can feel their feelings instead of shutting them down because you are busy, or tired or bored, or scared.

What words are useful then, on this World Mental Health Day? What words are important to hear? What helps? I can only tell you what worked for me, both for myself when I was in a dark place and when I had to hold the candle of faith in the darkest of spaces for my children.

‘I don’t know how to help you, but I love you and maybe we can figure this out together?’

‘I know it seems hopeless to you right now and that nothing will change. It must be very frightening where you are. I know you are working hard with everything you have to hang on. Maybe there isn’t any room in you for hope right now, but that’s ok. I’ll hope for you. I’ll believe in change for you. I’ll hold all that for you until you’re ready to hold it yourself.’

‘You do not need to do anything for me to love you. You do not need to be better. You are enough. You have always been enough and you will always be enough.’

‘I know you’re thinking that you can’t be here any more. I am really sorry that you feel like that. If you were to decide not to be here any more, I would miss you so much, because even though you can’t see it right now, you make my life so much better, just by being in it. I really hope you decide to stay. And whatever you choose to do, I will be here, no matter what.’

‘I see you and I love you exactly as you are.’

‘You are not alone.’

‘You are loved.’

And if you’re struggling today, and tomorrow and any day at all no matter whether it’s a national or international day or just a regular, plain old Tuesday, know that if these words resonated with you, then they are for you, too. I love you. You are loved.