This is so spot on! The mental health awareness week task says it all. "Colour in this flower, put it in your window, then have a discussion about mental health" -- if the campaign were centred around practical advice for having those difficult conversations, it would involve more people than those who are already engaged in the conversation, and its impact would be so much greater. As it is, it sounds like the campaign are just trying to shrug the responsibility for raising awareness on to everyone else. Another 10/10 Francis Madden take
Yesss exactly Charlie, the campaign seems like it's missing an elephant in the room. I doubt mental health awareness week really prompts much discussion in people who aren't already talking about it. And as you say, even if someone did want to start a new conversation, the campaign isn't concerned with giving advice on how to do that. A 10/10 Charlie Worsley comment
Interesting how I came across this video today, yesterday I just read a great article written by Lucy Foulkes for ''The Psychologist'''. It's called ''Mental Health awareness - time to refocus'' and she is mentioning the same issues. I'm glad we are starting to see the big picture.
Great video - all these awareness weeks seem to be quite futile but could have a massive impact if the proper messages were filtered through. What do you think is more important, dealing with "political" issues like unemployment and how to cope with work stress or actually educating people about brain chemistry imbalances and environmental factors which could impact mental health? P.S. cant believe this channel is giving me a free psychology degree :P
Unbelievable engagement with the content Ritters❤️ 100% dealing with political issues is more important imo. Things like getting into nature are superfluous and let's be honest, kinda obvious. Lol on your example, even psychologists need educating about brain chemistry imbalances, the science isn't clear at all.
Do you reckon upbringing has a big affect? I always hear of developing economies with very poor people who are happy, and the rates of depression in developed countries being much higher. ( Visited a slum in India and spoke to mabye 50 people, and they seemed honestly more content/happy than many people I've met in the UK who are significantly wealthier)
That's such a good point Vishnu, my guess is that firstly happiness is relative. If a slum is all you've ever known then that's your baseline for what is 'normal', so it doesn't have a detrimental effect on happiness compared to a hypothetical person who moves from a high income country to the same slum. And secondly, I wonder if there is a tighter sense of community in developing countries, bc of larger families and everyone being in it together - compared to the UK for example, where society is much more individualistic? Provided you have enough money to survive, it seems like more wealth gives you diminishing returns in terms of happiness, in which case advice like "go outside" might actually be relevant, but in the grand scheme of things it's not really significant.
