When did Britain’s backbone go missing?
Big-baby Britain. Boo-hoo Britannia. Welcome to our enfeebled Kingdom, United only by a collective neediness, pleadiness and mewling insistence that every single one of us is a special-and-delicate flower.
I’m not sure precisely when Britain’s backbone went missing, but can we have it back, please? We could display it in the Natural History Museum now Dippy the Dinosaur has gone on tour; and what a thing of wonder it would be.
Hard as it is to believe in our current lactose-intolerant, risk-averse, poor-me society, but Britain was once famous for its mettle (and, indeed, metal), its stiff upper lip and bulldog spirit.
These days, we’re better known for our safe spaces, weepy historical revisionism and hypochondriac insistence that we all have some sort of disorder. Surely there’s a middle ground between emotional constipation and emotional incontinence?
Before anybody bursts into tears, here’s my disclaimer: I do realise there are people out there with clinical depression, acute anxiety and related chronic issues. My heart goes out to them. I’m no stranger to such crises myself, so I know from experience the horror of feeling morbidly low or being gripped by entirely irrational but inescapable fight-or-flight fear.
The point I’m making is this: surely not everybody in the country is mentally ill? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks suspiciously as though we are facilitating, medicalising and infantilising the entire population.
Recent days have seen universities
criticised for being too eager to offer shy or lonely students counselling, rather than encouraging them to join a society, make friends, get over themselves and get on with their lives. Then we have a new app for young people who find making phone calls too stressful, despite (oh, irony of ironies) being on their phones 24/7. Using technology that was originally developed to assist deaf people, those snowflakes whose only affliction appears to be acquired helplessness will soon be able to use Live Replay to text and have an electronic voice read out their words. Talk about creating an unhealthy codependence.
I have a teenager at home who also refuses to make phone calls. Sorry, I mean she “suffers from a phobia”. This is the catch-all phrase that can handily cover just about anything; her friends variously have phobias as diverse as “taking public transport”, “loading the dishwasher” and, my favourite, “being on her own”.
Now, I remember when I was 16 and I too disliked phone conversations, late buses and doing the dishes – but back then, it was known as just being a teenager. As for being on my own when I wish I had company, that’s really part and parcel of the human condition. Sadly, we live in a hair-trigger age, where panic rather than reason is the first response, and outsourcing the problem is preferable to knuckling down and sorting it out oneself.
It’s why patients make emergency appointments to see their GP because their child has nits. And also why overweight people are now being “prescribed” bicycles on the NHS.
There’s nothing stopping the former from going to the chemist for a fine comb and chemicals shampoo. Or the latter from hiring or buying a bike off their own bat to take control of their health. But people who are struggling with weight problems are more likely to follow doctor’s orders because they want the input of a higher authority.
You could say it’s all in the mind. But the mind is notorious for playing tricks – often at our own behest.
Among the young, catastrophising normal emotions and repackaging them under the quasi-medical term “phobias” isn’t just nonsensical, it’s disempowering and dangerous.
But the trouble with online communities, Facebook friends and echo-chamber hyperconnectivity with schoolmates is that there’s nobody to disagree or dispute the self-diagnosis.
If our teenagers, tweenagers and tots spent far less time on their phones and a bit more in adult company, they would learn – eavesdrop – about the complex realities of the world. Their world. They might even learn to adapt rather than calling a helpline or posting lachrymose quotes on Instagram.
That’s not to say the unique pressures of modern life don’t cause stress; they do. But far better to counter them with optimism, gratitude – and increasingly, mindfulness – than immediately write a prescription or rope in a professional.
Coping strategies are great because they raise awareness of mental issues in a low-key way as well as enabling individuals to help themselves.
What I find alarming is that so many youngsters positively clamour to be given a label. I know parents terrified of disciplining their 12 and 14-year-olds for fear of upsetting them. I would call the resultant meltdowns common-or-garden tantrums, but I have been warned not to say so because it would be perceived as “belittling their pain”.
God forbid we should ever reverse the progress we have made in destigmatising genuine mental illness thanks to the courage of high-profile sufferers – ranging from Prince Harry to former Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain – speaking out.
Ask anyone tormented by this sort of pain and they will assure you they would give anything not to be in the vice-like grip of depression or anxiety.
Which is why I’m concerned about a worrying trend towards overusing “mental illness” as a badge of honour, or as an umbrella term to cover any circumstances that are remotely challenging or upsetting.
We need a nuanced debate about the difference between clinical illness and normal, if distressing, emotions.
Ordinary – happy – life invariably brings with it knocks and bumps. Sadness, loneliness and self-doubt are not comfortable, but they affect all of us at one point or another (with the possible exception of Jeremy Clarkson, Donald Trump and Piers Morgan, who are inversely afflicted with too much self-belief and self-satisfaction).
Unless we foster a sense of personal responsibility, resilience and robustness in the next generation, they will never voluntarily stand on their own two feet or recognise the merits of self-reliance.
Feeble Britain is not a place any of us should be proud of, or want to live in.
I’m no stranger to anxiety, but surely not everybody in this country is mentally ill?