Mental health empowerment: the power’s in the people

Imagine this. You are on your way home from work and notice an elderly man has just tripped and fallen. He is laying on the ground and his arm is bleeding. You, along with others around you, run over to render assistance to the gentleman, to see if he is okay, and to call an ambulance. His physical health has been impacted and needs immediate attention.

As you continue your way home you stand momentarily at an intersection. Opposite you is a person who is sad and upset; they have been recently struggling with depression and anxiety and are feeling very overwhelmed. This person’s mental health has been impacted and needs immediate attention. However, the pedestrian man signals and you both walk off into opposite directions and you think nothing more of that person. It was an insignificant moment in your day.

Poor mental health is often hard to diagnose; people will often tell you that they are okay as they do not want to burden you with their problems; poor mental health is often masked. When someone is bleeding, it is obvious their physical health requires attention, but if someone is sad, the requirement to render assistance is often not as obvious. Mental health is just as important as physical health.

If we take care of our mental health like our dental health; we’ll be ok. Howie Mandel

Poor mental health can be the result of many contributing factors including but not limited to relationships, employment, cost of living, financial pressures, accommodation, future planning, friends and family. Poor mental health can be accumulated over time, or the result of a particular event or situation. It can be isolated or contributory. These situations can arise as we are going about our life. It may be easier to think of our life as a pie; each slice represents a facet that makes up our life. Let’s call these facets 'life slices'. For example, these life slices could be work, sport, family, friends and neighbours. Each life slice is critically important to what makes us, us.

Figure 1, below, provides an example of these life slices and identifies strategies to check in and ensure that those around us, those with whom we experience life slices, are ok and not struggling.

Figure 1: Strategies for checking up on those around us within these “life slices”.

It is important to note that the above 'life slices' are not exhaustive. They are examples that suggest ways in which we can interact with those who we experience life with, in those 'life slices', to check that they are ok. I know myself when someone asks me how I am, it makes my day and gives me the impression that they care. If someone who is experiencing poor mental health feels that someone cares they are more likely to tell someone how they are feeling and how life could be getting them down. It is important for the person who checks in to ask genuinely and listen empathetically. All too often you hear horror stories of where someone has taken their life or harms themselves and people say, “You would never have known” or “I wish I had checked in to see how they were” or “They really kept to themselves over the last couple of months”. It is critically important to check in on those around us.

Robin Williams once said: “You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it”. That madness is what makes us unique; what makes us, us. Our spark is our charisma, our laughter, our happiness, our humour, our personality, our wit, our gestures. Just like a pie would not be complete without a flame to bake it, it is important to ensure that our spark and those around us within these life slices does not dim. It is significantly important to check in on those around you and to genuinely ensure that they are okay or help empathetically if they are not.

I encourage you all, as you go about your day, to identify ways in which you can use your spark to empower the spark of others or help others to find and recognise that spark again in themselves. While you’re at it, why only settle for a spark?! Let that spark ignite to a full burning, fantastic flame within. That flame can empower us all.