Mental health issues often well hidden
We must learn to tune in to others if we want to hear their cry for help
Having mental health issues is not like belonging to a secret society where there’s a sign — invisible to all except other sufferers — hovering overhead, indicating that, yes, this particular person, too, has the thing!
Personally, the only time when I sometimes become aware of others’ issues is when I take a break from worrying about me. It’s not easy, lately, to do that and I have a natural tendency to self-obsess when things are bad. But this kind of obsession is only comfortable in a murderous way — it’s like a crushing, dark blanket of gloom that I could just bury myself in and that will eventually bury me. And ignore you.
For the most part you can’t tell that someone lives with mental health issues. Yes, there’s the stereotype of “crazy,” such as a guy or a woman shuffling around in slippers with a funny concoction on his or her head talking to fairies. Ten years ago, in my former neighbourhood, there was a lady who liked to wash her breasts in the water fountain — that sort of mental imbalance is observable, obvious.
It’s the guy with a huge smile, a muscular handshake and a suit he wears to impress his boss (but also, perhaps, to cover up the demons inside). And it’s the perky girl in your biology class (with long sleeves hiding cigarette burns on her arms); the chirpy lady at work who organizes all those annoying baby-shower cake celebrations (but who locks herself in the bathroom to cry); and, more extremely, the well-adjusted Dylan Klebold (of the Columbine shootings) who loved baseball and bowling. All those people hide — or have hidden — behind their baseball and suits and smiles and cakes. We all want to appear “normal” because who wants to be ostracized, singled out as the “crazy” one?
I have before called someone “manic” or “depressed” because of how they behaved — ecstatically shopping or standing in the corner at cocktail parties, sighing to a canapé instead of socializing. But I would never try to diagnose somebody with mental illness — I don’t have the qualifications other than my undergrad in psychology and my own experience with mental health issues. Sometimes I find out because someone confesses her pain. Other than that, it’s usually hard to tell. There was once a lovely colleague who worked alongside me in a stressful job environment. She seemed very balanced and happy, but after we parted ways, I found out she dealt with an anxiety disorder.
There is one exception when I notice something is off. Occasionally, I will take liberties with wondering about someone’s stability based on this person’s behaviour — I am talking about people with addiction is- sues. I’m not saying that it’s right that I do that, judge, but having identified as an alcoholic in the past and having been around 12-step meetings long enough, I can speculate about a person who downs three beers in under 30 minutes, or who drinks Scotch like it’s going out of style, every evening, and who is always anxious, depressed, angry. But I can’t call someone an addict.
In AA, doing that goes against the first step: “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction — that our lives had become unmanage- able.” The step doesn’t say, “We were told by someone else that we were powerless . . .” Furthermore, just like the unhappy-happy guy in the suit, people with addiction can hide it well. They often isolate — and unless you’re around them a lot, you’ll never witness the sudden anger that comes after three Scotches and half a bottle of wine. But that’s like having a case study right there — you’re around and the behaviour is consistent enough to become obvious.
So other than being told about it or witnessing it on a regular basis, the only other way to tell there is something wrong with someone is by getting out of yourself and paying attention. This means doing simple things: foregoing checking texts during lunch with a friend who’s been a little too quiet lately, calling your desk buddy from work when he’s absent three days in the row because of flu (it could be flu, sure), confronting a friend who is avoiding your calls. Checking in.
If mental health issues were as visible as physical issues — let’s say you were bleeding out of your ears if you were depressed — we would be able to tell easily; we would be able to treat it not as some weird fancy or moral failing. Funny that we can’t see radio waves, yet we hear music, believe that there is music playing. But it’s not even about literally seeing — after all, you can’t see a lot of cancers — it’s about seeing people as in being aware of the subtle changes; forgetting about your own stuff for a bit.
I never knew my former work colleague suffered from anxiety despite sitting right next to her for years — I was too busy working, too busy being upset over a breakup, then too busy emailing with the new guy I started dating. And all the meanwhile, my lovely colleague’s radio waves went unheard. Jowita Bydlowska is the author of Drunk Mom, a memoir. She writes an occasional column on mental health.