Have you noticed how nobody is allowed to be sad any more? Depressed? Grieving? No. Today, everything is about mental health. If you are struggling at work, it is because of your mental health, not because you might not be up to the job. If you can’t get out of bed in the morning to go to look for a job, you are not lazy, you have mental health issues. And so on.
Many mental health issues are not really mental health issues at all, in the sense that they are not ‘health’ issues. Anyone can feel down, upset, bored or ‘depressed’ (I am not referring to clinical depression here, just a feeling of being ‘down in the dumps’) and they can get over it without medical intervention. Sometimes, the ‘mental health’ condition can go away once a particular situation is resolved, meaning that it was not a ‘mental health’ situation at all; it was a problem that needed to be sorted out. I have even talked to metal health nurses who often agree that some people’s ‘mental health’ situations can be vastly improved, or even completely eliminated if only those involved could solve a pressing problem in their lives – a bad relationship, a toxic work environment, an addiction, a problematic child or parent – so again, these are not ‘mental health’ issues at all. But these days, every time someone feels even a little bit down, it is classed as a ‘mental health’ issue and the solutions are much more damaging and far reaching than they need to be.
The entire ‘mental health’ situation has reached giddy new heights this week with the withdrawal of gymnast Simone Biles from the Tokyo Olympics. She just didn’t have the mental toughness to carry on, so she withdrew. There is nothing wrong with that; the gold medalist from Rio was expected to perform miracles at Tokyo… and she didn’t. She just didn’t have it in her anymore. Fair enough.
This is hardly the first time we have come across sports people who lack the mental grit to make it to the top echelons in sport, or to hang in there. A big part of the pressure must be that person always breathing down your neck, waiting for you to falter so that they can take your place. Some sports people, enormously talented at their particular sport, never make it to the top because they cannot handle the pressure. Jesse Ryder was a good example of this; brilliant at club cricket, excellent at playing for his region, he was a very disappointing Black Cap, unable to keep off the booze. Was this mental health issues? No. It was someone who simply lacked the mental toughness to excel at the top of his sport. Many are in the same category.
“It’s been really stressful this Olympic Games,” said Biles, who came to Tokyo as arguably the Games’ biggest star. “It’s been a long week. It’s been a long Olympic process. It’s been a long year. Just a lot of different variables and I think we’re just a little bit too stressed out, but we should be out here having fun and sometimes that’s not the case.”
So she wasn’t enjoying it anymore. That is understandable. Top level sport is very tough. There were enormous expectations put on Biles that she clearly felt unable to live up to, so she withdrew. But the fall of Simone Biles has introduced a whole new attitude to those who cannot cope with the pressure. The star attraction of Tokyo 2020 appears unlikely to compete any further after USA Gymnastics confirmed “further medical evaluation” ruled she was unfit to compete in the all-around final.
For “Further medical evaluation”, read “mental health issues”.
Biles’s situation seems to have come from the fact that she was planning a particularly difficult vault, which no woman has ever achieved to date. If she had pulled it off, she would have made gymnastic history, but if she had got it wrong, she might have ended up permanently injured or even paralysed. No wonder she felt a huge amount of pressure. But feeling pressure is not a mental health issue. Deciding to withdraw to save yourself from a possible serious injury is not a mental health issue. It is smart. It shows good judgment, and it also shows that sport is not everything, even for top athletes.
But no. Now the media is screaming for more support for athletes, for 24-hour helplines and on-site counsellors. Simone Biles has brought the mental health of all athletes to the fore. Now we will hear of nothing else for years to come.
The biggest advocate of ‘mental health’ issues is, of course, the idiot prince, Harry, who goes on video tapping himself and looking every bit the gormless fool he is recognised to be. (I tend to refer to his demeanour as simply ‘mental’. That seems to cover it.) So watch out for more tub-thumping and wailing from the failed prince over this issue. There was never a ‘mental health’ issue that he could not exploit, and this will be no different. Cue a call to Oprah. That must be worth a few million.
Top level sport is tough. Simone Biles did the right thing for herself and her future physical health, but these are not ‘mental health’ issues. This is the inability to cope with the pressure, and just because she managed it in Rio, it does not mean she can manage it now.
Doctors are renowned for doling out little pills to everyone that turns up in their clinics citing ‘mental health’ issues, but I wonder if we are really all unable to cope. I can’t help thinking of “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley. All the people were given a dose of a drug called soma every day to keep them content. They even had a Jacinda-like slogan: “A gram (of soma) is better than a damn”. With doctors doling out anti-depressants like sweets and everyone constantly talking about ‘mental health issues’, do you think we are most of the way to our own Brave New World? I am beginning to wonder.
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