A Too-Brief Snapshot Of Modern Mental Health

We know it’s not great. We know COVID probably didn’t help. What else do we know?

The good news is that there has been a turn towards understanding mental health more in the last 10 years. I still don’t think we’re really “there” yet, and I think the answer inside many families (and on Facebook rant pages) is “Go chop wood, be a man” (on the male side) or “Focus on your family, honey, and that will make you happier” (female). I also think there’s been a huge semantic warfare element to mental health discussions in the past decade; there’s a lot of “If you don’t acknowledge this, you’re a monster and you want people to jump off parking garages.” Some people just can’t — and will never — understand mental health. (This is often men.) Easiest way I can say it: most people have a specific emotional bar they can reach, and for a lot of people, that’s not a very high bar.

Still, we’re somewhere with mental health right now. It’s mostly an individual journey so looking at it in the aggregate has flaws, and I think many of us have seen the studies and articles about “12-month therapy wait times” and “children cannot get therapists,” etc. It’s sad. We’re not there yet, but I think there’s been some acknowledgment.