It’s Not Enough to Be ‘Not Unwell’: Wanting a Positive Definition of Mental Health

Image via Nigel Tadyanehondo

I didn’t grow up Catholic, and I assume that if I had I would have had a better understanding of purgatory, but because my time in those solemnly boring services was sparse, I developed a different association with the word purgatory. To me, purgatory was sitting in a room full of therapists listening to them talk about their clients. Staffing’s, which is what these meetings are called, bored me to no end. Even as a wide-eyed student intern, there was something off-putting about them, and despite my respect for the profession, I cannot help but feel agitated when I find myself in those scenarios. All time and experience did was reinforce my feelings and raise them to biblical proportions. 

I am a social worker specifically because I like helping people in ways that are tangible. I chose this path because there was a physicality, a proof of impact that I was seeking in my work, which would be the evidence that I had done something that mattered. 

After five years or so of practicing, I started to look at the problem from a different angle and see a deeper issue. I realize now that my frustration with staffing came from the fact that we were sitting in rooms talking about our clients, their issues and mental illnesses, without saying a single word, beyond give them more treatment, about what it would mean for them to be mentally healthy. During my training and education I cannot recall anyone being able to devise a plan for how our clients could go about achieving that. 

Approaching mental health from the perspective of what it is not rather than what it is leads to the sort of problems I was having and contributes to ideas about mental health being separated into factions with varying degrees of validity. Therapists are then compelled to choose which tribe they will join. They often choose based on which ideas are en vogue at the time or were presented to them during the formative years of their training, and rarely do they change after making this initial decision. 

There are hundreds of different approaches to treating mental illness. Most of them are clever and insightful, and yet still struggle to define and describe what mental health is. I do not know what the best definition is, but I know that it should not be singular, closed off to revision, or immune to dismissal should a better one come along and replace it (this is an inevitability). 

Despite the increasing trend towards the use of therapeutic language, there is a need to clarify in simple terms what mental health is. People need guideposts as they journey towards wellness. Especially because mental health is having its moment. It is becoming a part of our everyday lexicon and is no longer something that is pushed off to the side. How long this moment will last is uncertain, but it is clear at this point in time that everyone needs a basic understanding of mental health. 

Freud spoke about the connection between societal pressures and individual dysfunction and meant for psychoanalysis to be a mediator between the two. In some ways this is still the hope of psychotherapy and the process of finding ways to balance these pressures is constantly changing in response to our environments. The success of that goal hinges, at least partly, on people’s ability to be able to work and to love, and this being the case, mental health must be more than the mere absence of illness and dysfunction.