Is your child mentally ill? As a parent, I would feel very frightened if I was asked this question. Mental illness seems scary and unpredictable, and conjures up images of a really damaged person who isn't able to cope with life. But this is wrong. Just like there are degrees of physical illness, there are degrees of mental illness. We all get colds, and most of us have some experience of things going wrong in our minds too. We just tend to keep our periods of mental illness hidden.
If you ask me the question 'is your child mentally ill?' I am going to be defensive, because somehow it feels like I would be to blame as a parent. I must have caused this by doing something wrong. There is this crazy idea in society that people are wholly responsible for their mental illness. We don't go around blaming people for catching a cold, but somehow if you are depressed it must be your fault. You've failed at being a person. If your child is experiencing anxiety it must be because you raised them badly. You've failed at being a parent.
This needs to change. If my child has become increasingly withdrawn and disengaged, if she is refusing to eat or is regularly tearful, if she seems less able to control her emotions and is unhappy every day, I need to do something about it. She is not failing, and neither am I. Her body and her mind are reacting to circumstances in a way that could make her ill, and she needs help getting back to a healthy mind and a healthy body. Calpol isn't going to cut it, but just as you wouldn't leave a child with a temperature untreated, we shouldn't leave a child who isn't coping unsupported.
There is a huge way to go before mental illness loses any stigma, and it is taken as seriously and funded as well as physical illness. But maybe this pandemic has pushed us further along the path. People are speaking very openly about the impact on their mental health, and there have been highly publicised calls to the government to tackle the impending mental health crisis. This week is Mental Health Week. Wouldn't it be amazing if we got to the point where we didn't need a Mental Health Week? Where mental health and physical health just became 'health'. Where it would be as natural to say 'I've just got over a bout of depression' as it would be to say 'I've just got over the flu'.
If my child was mentally ill, I wouldn't be defensive and I wouldn't feel a failure, I would get her the help or treatment she needed to get well again. Just like I did when she had chicken pox, tonsillitis or a tummy bug.
You might ask 'Is your child mentally ill?' and I would reply: 'she was, but now she is doing fine. Thanks for asking.'
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