The need to unplug
Has the dawn of the internet age been good for our mental health? Or really bad?
There is great optimism: the digital revolution heralds a utopian, democratic, postmodern world where we are all connected, resourced, empowered, heard, transparent, authentic and free to be who we are. There was even a theory that the internet might flatten a chronically unlevel playing field, though perhaps only for those that have a smart phone and good wifi.
There is great pessimism: we’re entering a dystopian, virtual world where a person is reduced to an online profile to be swiped left or right, texts replace conversation, virtual friends replace real ones, “likes” replace activism, emoticons replace emotions (except for anxiety—lots more anxiety). Human intelligence outsourced to machines, vast amounts of time wasted, attention spans worse than a goldfish, retrograde evolution. We plug into a world wide web and watch helplessly as our humanity drains away.
To stay alive, and truly connected, we sometimes have to unplug.
One story this week highlights the internet as a problem for our inner worlds; another explores its claims to be a solution:
Parent Zone’s report, The Perfect Generation: Is the Internet Undermining Young People's Mental Health?, contains the results of a survey of teachers and teenagers. Among the findings:
• 44% of teachers think the internet is bad for young people’s mental health, compared to 28% of young people.
• 91% of teachers believe the frequency of mental health issues among pupils is increasing.
• Of these issues, schools report stress and anxiety (95%), depression (70%) and self-harm (66%) as the most common issues amongst pupils.
• 84% of schools say they do not have adequate resources to deal with pupils’ mental health issues.
“All of the indicators suggest that the prevalence of mental health problems and the severity of those problems are increasing. Some people are linking the internet to the increase.”
The report concludes that new problems require new solutions, that schools need much better resources for responding to mental health issues, and that tech companies “should recognise both their duty of care and their unique opportunity to create online spaces that are positive and inspiring.”
Meanwhile, in “I tried to fix my mental health on the internet,” anxiety sufferer Joe Madden made himself a human guinea pig to see if computers could replace counsellors, subjecting himself to three varieties of e-help: text-based, social media and video-conference.
Writes Madden (for the BBC): “Could e-counselling be the answer to the mental health issues escalating amongst under-30s? With cuts to mental health services really starting to bite, digitised therapy could be just the ticket for young adults who already filter nearly every aspect of their lives – friends, work, sex, entertainment – through a screen.”
He concludes: “E-counselling still feels like it's finding its feet: there are useful tools out there for the mild-to-medium prang-brained, but, as yet, no killer app that feels destined to reinvent mental health care for the hashtag age. What form might that ingenious wonder app take? No idea. If I knew that, I'd be off making it, instead of here, recklessly toying with my mental well-being for your half-distracted amusement.”
Concludes Balick, “The need to relate has not changed. The need to recognise and be recognised has not changed. The need to seek and be sought has not been altered. The architecture, however, of the ways we do all these fundamental things that ake us human has indeed changed, and that may be changing us.”
We are increasingly addicted to our “electronic cocaine” and sometimes we must unplug, disconnect, such that we might return again to the real connections, the ones that are a primary human need—connections with self, with others, with nature.
Traditional therapy, as old as the hills, remains untouched by technology, and untouchable. Two people sit in a quiet, spare room. One is there to serve the other. If all goes well the encounter facilitates acceptance, change and growth. For the better. It is not a cure, for there is no cure for life. But it helps.
Therapy is a place where you can become who you want to be—who you are meant to be. Where you can learn to live—if not the life you imagined, then the life that has been waiting for you all along.
“I wanted a new kind of mental health support group:
we meet in the pub"
Jessica Spires tells the story of the creation of Let’s Go Mental, “an informal, peer-led support group for young people with experience of mental health issues.” They meet once a month in a London pub:
One day I met with a friend for coffee, and inevitably some of the unfounded anxieties I was having about my relationship came up. Instead of the usual response, “I’m sure that won’t happen, don’t worry about it”, I was met with an answer so refreshing it was like a verbal slap around the face: “I totally get what you mean; I think that all the time too.” Those few words brought more relief than all of the conversations I’d previously had about my anxiety put together.
I wanted that feeling again. I turned to Google (naturally) to look for a support group, but found very little that appealed, and mostly they weren’t local. So I decided to start one myself. The paradox of mental illness is that even though I felt alone, there were so many people around me going through the same thing, but I had to reach out and find them. I think Let’s Go Mental (LGM) was born at that very moment.
....I wanted LGM to be different than the depictions of support groups I’d seen on episodes of BBC crime dramas. No sitting around in a circle of chairs in a starkly lit room with a few bourbons and some weak tea. I wanted to recreate the ease of that conversation I’d had over coffee with a friend. Where is the best place to make British people feel at ease? The pub, of course. That’s how it happened, the premise of the group is really that simple. We go to the pub, we hang out and have a drink, and we talk about mental health.
“We must have change”
Conferences of the great and the good in areas like science, health and politics take place at Oxbridge colleges most weeks of the year. But this one was like few others.
Conceived and organised by the father of an 18-year-old who had taken his own life barely a year earlier, this one-day gathering offered a broad and challenging view of the state of mental health care of young people in England.
It revealed a widely shared view that notwithstanding the recent publication of NHS England's Mental Health Taskforce report, there is a lack of drive and joined-up thinking in government and the health service.
Steve Mallen has already shared his grief and anger at the loss of his son. A talented straight A-grade student, Edward was set to go to Cambridge University. But in a matter of weeks he succumbed to depression and took his own life.
University of Edinburgh hits record number of students seeking counselling services
A study into mental health at 24 of the UK’s top universities has found that the number of students seeking counselling has increased from 34,000 to 43,000 in just three years.
In all the universities surveyed, the University of Edinburgh saw the largest increase in students pursuing counselling services with figures rising by 75 per cent in the three year period, with a 15 per cent increase in the last year alone.
In an interview with The Student in February, Edinburgh University Students Association (EUSA) Vice President Societies and Activities Andy Peel said the counselling service received one hundred referrals a week.
Anxiety was the most common reason for attending counselling services, with more than 6000 students reporting to suffer from the condition.
Exercise may help young people with psychosis
For young adults who have experienced severe mental health disorders, exercise may help reduce the severity of their symptoms, a new, small study suggests.
In the study, researchers looked at 38 adults, ages 18 to 35, who had experienced an episode of psychosis — a serious mental disorder in which a person loses touch with reality and may experience delusions and hallucinations. All of the people were receiving antipsychotic medications and mental health care through early-intervention mental health services in England.
... The researchers found that the people who participated in the exercise program experienced a 27 percent decrease in the overall severity and frequency of their symptoms over the 10 weeks, on average. In comparison, the severity and frequency of symptoms among the people in the control group decreased by nearly 8 percent, on average, over the same period of time, they found.
When you were young, Girlguiding was either something you did or something you wanted to do, because everyone who went was taught useful skills that saw them earn badges. Those skills were always things like camping, science and cookery, but the latest badge Girl Guides are striving for is rather different - and very useful.
A new badge programme, called Think Resilient, gives Girl Guides an opportunity to talk about mental wellbeing, and it's been introduced with the aim of breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health.
...It's great news that Girlguiding sees the importance in talking about mental health, and is acting upon research they conducted in 2015. At the time, they found that 82% of girls and young women aged 11 to 21 feel that adults don't often recognise the pressure that young people are under, and that 62% in the same age group know a girl or young woman who has experienced a mental health problem.
In an interview with “Good Morning America” Prince Harry of Wales addressed the negative stereotypes attached to those who have mental health issues, particularly the stigma that often plagues war veterans who suffer from ”the invisible injury.”
Says Harry: “The simplest thing, just talking about it, makes all the difference.”
Sweden: We Need to Talk About Europe's Refugees
Given their tough circumstances and traumatic pasts, it’s no surprise that refugees are more likely to experience depression, anxiety and PTSD than the general population. But what about more serious mental health issues—is psychosis, too, more common among the exiled?
According to a Care2 story, yes:
Researchers based at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the University College London in the UK have attempted to gain insight into this serious health issue.
In an article published in the British Medical Journal this month, researchers describe how they used anonymous data from a cohort of 1.3 million people born after 1984 — excluding those below age 14.
...the researchers found that refugees in Sweden were around 66 percent more likely to develop nonaffective psychotic disorders than migrants — people not claiming refugee status — from the same geographic location.
This finding contributes to a body of research that already demonstrated a greater risk of psychosis among migrants. But this is the first study to look at the particular situation of people claiming refugee status.
...“The dramatically increased risk among refugees shows that life events are a significant risk factor for schizophrenia,” lead author Anna-Clara Hollander explained.
U.S.A.: Undivided attention—Mental Health Reform Act
Lawmakers in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions have just released the draft text of a bill that, they hope, could bring about a much needed update and reform of mental health care in the United States. It also shows that bipartisanship is not dead, and that when lawmakers work together the potential for serious legislative change is still possible.
The bill is being worked on by Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), leader of the Senate Health Committee, with Democrat Senator Patty Murray (WA) and Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA).
The legislation is known as the Mental Health Reform Act of 2016, and it aims to achieve what could end up being the biggest overhaul in mental health care in decades by dramatically cutting the federal bureaucracy around mental health programs. It would increase state funds for certain mental health services and increase treatment options and availability for at risk groups such as children, people with no fixed address, and people who are already at risk of suicide.
Lebanon: “Karim” delivers psychological support to Syrian refugees
More than 1 million Syrians have fled to Lebanon since the start of the conflict and as many as one-fifth of them may be suffering from mental health disorders, according to the World Health Organisation.
But Lebanon’s mental health services are mostly private and the needs of refugees – who may have lost loved ones, their home, livelihood and community – are mostly going unmet.
Hoping to support the efforts of overworked psychologists in the region, the Silicon Valley startup X2AI has created an artificially intelligent chatbot called Karim that can have personalised text message conversations in Arabic to help people with their emotional problems. As the user interacts with Karim, the system uses natural language processing to analyse the person’s emotional state and returns appropriate comments, questions and recommendations.
Eugene Bann, the co-founder and CTO of X2AI, says: “There are barely any mental-health services in refugee camps. People have depression, anxiety, a sense of hopelessness and fear of the unknown.”
Indonesia: The living hell of people with mental health conditions
Human Rights Watch
More than 57,000 people in Indonesia with mental health conditions have been chained and locked up in overcrowded rooms or filthy sheds at least once in their lives. About 18,000 are still believed to be shackled, despite a 1977 government ban on pasung, as the practice is called. Access to support and mental health care is desperately needed. Yet with only 48 mental hospitals for the country’s 17,000 islands, families continue to either admit relatives with psychosocial disabilities without their consent to institutions where they are subjected to a wide range of abuses or to chain or lock them up at home.
Human Right Watch’s Kriti Sharma visited 18 mental hospitals, social care centers and private institutions run by faith healers or traditional healers and interviewed about 150 people across Indonesia’s heavily populated islands of Java and Sumatra. Her new report, “Like Living in Hell” for the first time gives those who have been locked up for years a voice.
• Govt prepares mobile counseling for teens (Jakarta Post)
Myanmar: Lacking support, mental health patients suffer in silence
When Chit San was finally released through an amnesty in 1996 his struggle, however, was not over. Like many thousands of former political prisoners in Myanmar, he suffers from symptoms of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which he developed as a result of the psychological and physical trauma he experienced at the hands of the former regime.
Another legacy of the military government, the country’s wrecked healthcare system, means that many of those suffering from psychological problems, whether from torture or other causes, cannot receive much-needed psychological treatment from government healthcare facilities.
Cultural stigma and a lack of public understanding in Myanmar about common disorders, such as depression and anxiety, further worsens their plight. Many people choose to suffer in silence rather than face being labelled 'ayoo', or crazy.
...With government care almost non-existent, non-profit organisations and overseas supporters have stepped in.
Programs like the Mental Health Assistance Program (MHAP), of the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoner's (AAPP), provide such support. Funded by Johns Hopkins University in the United States, MHAP uses a psychotherapy treatment method called Common Elements Treatment Approach, which is suited for low-resource settings like Myanmar.