Mental health is a tricky subject from my experiences. Mainly because it’s so personal and individual ( aside from the general diagnostics you can get from going to a psychiatrist ). Yesterday, here in Belgium, an even called “Rode Neuzen Dag” ( Red Nose Day ; referring to brighten up children their day in the hospital by volunteers dressed as clowns ) came to an end. though it has the word “Day” in it, it’s actually spanning a few weeks, organizing several charities to raise money to help out the youth. This year they raised money for kids with weak social skills or general mental apptitude. As said, it ended yesterday and they raised a little over four million euros.
Now I’m all for charities, because by definition they are to help others out. However, I always ask myself if it’s really needed. Of course this depends on the nature of what you are raising money for. Cancer research for example is obvious or people who lost limb, but need the extra financial support to get the bionics ( not everything gets refunded by the health insurance or the tech might be too new and thus very expensive ). So I do see the good in charities, no doubt! Remember I’m only giving my two cents on any subject and I do want to know what others think about it.
So why am I a bit negative when it comes to mental health charities, right? Well, that’s because I have had a period of instability when it came to my mental health. I know it exists and can cause troubles, maybe I was just the exception on how I dealt with it. I will keep my story short for now, might make a blog about it another day. My darkest hour was when I was still searching for a job, the only thing I knew then was bills and I only saw what little I had go to just that. After countless rejections I just couldn’t bare it anymore. Every passing day, the thought of just ending my life became bigger and I kept that for myself. I was even getting recurring anxious dreams. Simply put those dreams were a manifestation of the feeling of failure. The last dream was different however and when I woke up it felt like something snapped in me. Now I am a stubborn person, so maybe that’s why, but I suddenly refused to give in to those thoughts. A few weeks later, I stepped inside the place where I’m working now. It still gives me a weird feeling thinking about it, how it seems as if everything was meant to be or if it was just a random string of events that just happened to not be the end of my life.
What I’m trying to say is, do you really need help or is it better to deal with it on your own. Help might make you dependant on outside support and conquering your problems solo makes you stronger. It vastly depends on the person to begin with, however I’m leaning more to the solo side, even setting my own experiences aside. To me, there’s nothing better then being able to fall back on yourself, in any situation. So doing anything on your own ( as far as you feel comfortable with it ) makes you a more resilient and self sufficient. On the other hand, you could argue what help is. Is simply listening to someone helping, because talking to yourself in an empty room might not help ( most might even feel this is a step towards going mad, but it’s not what I want to convey by giving this example ). I don’t see talking/listening to someone as helping, since to me it’s part of who we are. We’re proud to be social creatures, but often we neglect that part of ourselves when it is needed the most. So basic human interaction is just a given and shouldn’t be seen as something on it’s own or as an extra. Which help is in my eyes, to do something extra for someone so things will be easier.
Which brings me to what they are planning to do with the raised money. And I do have my doubts about the examples they gave. Most will be done at schools and will involve, but are not limited to silent rooms and white rooms. Silent rooms, like the name implies is a place of quiet. One can go there to escape the busy playground, because a lot of students seem to ask for such a place. It does strike me as somewhat odd, if a lot ( and I assume this means the majority, we still do things democratically after all ) want this, then my question is ‘ why need a seperate space for peace and tranquility if everyone can just be calm and quiet themselves from time to time? ‘ It might seem weird to ask, but at the same time it’s also a valid and logical question. If however this doesn’t apply to the majority, I can understand it a bit more. But then I tend to think of the age old debate extraverts vs introverts. I’m not saying it is that, it might just be one of the causes for example. The second type of room, white rooms, is to give kids a place to doodle and let their creativity run wild on white walls. This is something that might seem as weird as the silent rooms, but I do have more understanding for what they’re trying to do with the creative approach.
Even if you’re not the creative type, you can always make the worst doodles in existence and still get a satisfied feeling from it. Getting your mind off of other things in that moment. This might come from a problem that has been created for years now. Some simply want to be ‘wild’, it’s a bit strongly worded but I mean it in the way of climbing trees, have little scuffles with other kids ( no real fighting though ). You know, just kids being kids when you let them loose on a playground or in a park/forest. These days you have almost none of those places. They’ve either been abandoned or removed because of complains from the neighbourhood. Sure there are still parks, but again, no dedicated place for kids to be themselves. So this might translate to cropped up bursts of wanting to let loose and a white room, pristine white walls, ready to be ‘vandalised’ is just the thing that will eleviate some tension. Oh and those that might argue that it means those same kids would vandalise a playground, every action has a cause and it’s how you deal with that cause that decides what someone will or will not do.
All that being said. I do hope it actually will make a difference, if not the money is just wasted and nobody has gotten the help they expected. Will they be stronger in life because of it? Time will tell. Let’s just hope all the effort impacts them now and relatively quick too. If they still have lingering problems by the time they’re expected to be fully functional adults contributing to society, we might have a bigger problem on our hands. Forgive the pessimist in me for a moment though ( but personally, being ready for the worst has made me stronger ).
If anyone reading this does need a talk, I’m always willing to listen. Just let me know in the comments or on Twitter .