Mental Health: A Call to Wake Up and Take Care

Go Love: Taking a Minute to Pause and Consider

the United States of America's Current State of Mental Health

It is most often in times of despair and deep soul searching, questioning, and connecting that we come to terms with deeper Truth.  

We strive for meaning often as a result of tragedy and dark nights of the soul. In the US, we have had some strong unstable wake up calls in the past months, between the shootings at the school in Connecticut and the bombings at the Boston Marathon.  They are uncomfortable reminders that there are extremely unbalanced minds among us. 

But in these instances of tragedy we are reminded of a reality that we as individuals and a culture that glorifies youth often chooses to ignore:  our mortality.

When things are flowing along smoothly, when our days feel predictable and are unfolding they way we expect them to we lose sight of the fact that life holds us all in the same vulnerable mortal state of existence.  

When normal daily routines are interrupted by a stinging diagnosis we didn't expect at the doctor's office or by tragic violence in a place we'd least expect it, we are being called to acknowledge how much we love the illusion that life is fully under our own control.  This misleads us into a false feeling of independence and mastery of the world, when in actuality the profound interdependent nature of life is anything but predictable and able to be controlled one hundred percent of the time.  

That Truth makes many very uncomfortable.  It is something most would rather forget about and just move on over to the pleasurable, easy expectation and habitual way of living that generally gives us what we want, when we want it.  

But at what cost?  When we are so inundated with being busy (the Chinese character for "busy" actually means "heart killing") or we are so devoted to a pattern of keeping our attention busily absorbed checking email, texting, messaging, absorbed in video games, watching movies, talking on the phone, and a variety of other distracting killers of silence and fillers of space, how can we be comfortable and relax outside of this norm?

The short answer is, we can't.  

It really can come as no surprise that for a nation of people constantly on the move, our energy and attention is continually drawn into drama, discussion and distraction.  This keeps us vibrating in a constant state of change, except we rarely notice.   That we have a very low threshold for present moment living in peace and happiness not produced by any outside stimulation should come as no surprise.  

The really important question is what is happening to the health of our minds and bodies as a result?  What happens when the external sources of entertainment and communication are unplugged?  When we sit down and try to tune in, what do we find?   

Simply discovering who we are as a human being...who is just practicing "being" without any need to feel or look a certain way, to respond, to ignore, to perform, to earn.   Merely just to be.  Just for a moment.  What would this be like?

This implies experiencing oneself much more as an intricate process that always has multiple interdependent aspects happening all at once and slowing down to the state of awareness and presence of mind to just experience the moment.  To meet this with an inquisitive mind, sit with it and within it, with all of its magnificence and with all of its unknowns.  To be clear and conscious of one's mortality, fragility, and strength.  What would that feel like?

Back in December of 2012 I was waiting in a doctor's office for an 87 year old friend who was having the first mammogram of her life.  A young woman in her mid to late 20's came out to the coat rack in tears. I was called in as my elder friend was told she would need a biopsy as soon as possible for a growth discovered in her breast.  The news reached me Friday evening about the tragic unfolding of events with the shootings at the school in Connecticut.  As soon as the heightened drama and negativity of the election receded it was replaced with talk of fiscal cliffs and more political impasse.  It seems that the news driving the airwaves is a constant high pitched whine towards doom and gloom, difficulty, dissension and dissatisfaction.  

How can we hope to touch peace through all of this noise?  Is the world coming to an end? It certainly sounds like it.  But no, this is only a view of life that keeps the news stations on 24/7.   

When by chance I happened to hear the news of the tragedy in Connecticut on the radio I reached for a pillow and sobbed.  I felt deeply how unpredictable the life and world is, then I decided to put love into gear.  

I drove to the downtown where I live and stood with others who have been there every Friday evening since 9/11, the group Veterans for Peace. I lit my candle and held a sign that asked, "How is the war economy working for you?"  The next night I helped organize a candle light vigil which over 30 people attended, including my 87 year old friend and another who came onto the town green in her wheelchair. We stood mostly in silence punctuated by the background sound of a railway bell tolling which was somewhat reminiscent to the sound of a school bell.  It rang for the 30 minutes in 26 degree arctic winds.

I have asked a few people for their feelings about what occurred in Connecticut and have heard some profound answers.  I asked a young Christian friend who is 19 about how he reconciles what happened.  "Where was God in all of this?"  

He said, "That is a hard question.  I think God is always there, but was unknown by that individual."  

Another friend, a woman in her mid-forties, said, "I did feel upset to hear about this.  But did I cry?  No, I didn't. Because the reality is that children around the world are dying daily by the hundreds or even thousands from hunger and we are not reporting with shock and concern about their lives.  I do feel for the parents and our country, but why aren't we just as upset and outraged over these children's deaths especially when we can prevent them from dying of hunger?"  

My elder friend of 87 sees this event as a call to the collective conscious of the U.S.A. to wake up to change the nature of our society that accepts and perpetrates violence, is the world wide leading producer of weapons and ammunition, and fights for the rights of gun ownership without qualification of type of weapon.  She believes the children and teachers are martyrs to help the country motivate and move itself into a more mature discussion around weapons, ammunition, and the violence they produce.

For my part, I have come to the conclusion that the most underlying cause of this tragedy as well as our national obsession with fear, a defensive suspicious mindset, that then justifies weapons and violence.  It has to do with the mental health of our nation.  Not just of the young man who was clearly suffering or his misguided mother who took him to the target range and had weapons at home, but also of those advocacy groups that misrepresent their true purpose.  

Why is the National Rifle Association advocating semi-automatic weapons?  It should at least change its name to the National Semi-Automatic Weapons Association to keep its intentions clear:  that it stands for the premise that weapons of war are desirable parts of the culture of our country.  Then we can at least know to expect more mass murders and senseless killings because it is advocating that this is the culture people feel is there right to live in.   

But no.  Saying this in plain English just sounds, well, too crazy.  Too mentally ill.  Which is exactly the point.  It is mentally deficient to believe this is the best vision we can come up with for a country that is built on the principles of peace, liberty, and justice for all. 

What is on the line is not just the mental health of individuals in our country, but of our country as a whole.  The mental health of our society is reflected by its members and vice-versa.  We have had decades of evidence which demonstrate that overwhelmingly, young men suffering from schizophrenia, depression, and other forms of mental illness may eventually act violently as an expression of their mental state of mind.  Often they injure or take their own lives and lives of many others.  The current health care and school systems have completely inadequate avenues of screening, identifying and helping these individuals.

Mental health, which in many ways is even more critical than physical health, has never been given adequate attention and earned a place that is front and center in our health care conversations and dedicated practices.  This is what needs to change immediately.  It is so very clear that someone with a healthy body but with no control of the mind can cause devastating harm to society. It is just as evident that someone who loses their physical health but maintains a healthy mind can do enormous good for society.

The perspective of health care needs to begin with a mind-body view.  Unless we take seriously that state of mental health as front and central to being able to live a healthy, happy and productive life we as individuals and society in America will remain sadly out of touch with the ingredients that go into creating good health.  We have put so much external emphasis on health: body weight, calorie counting, hours of sleep, exercise, eye and ear exams, that we have completely ignored the deeper roots of why we use these external measures.  All of the measurable approaches to health is driven by changes from an internalized experience of reality and relationships: perceptions, emotions, sensations.  

We are what we think, eat and drink.  But as importantly we are first the intention that creates a motivation that drives us in a certain direction to think, eat and drink.  Unless we can begin to try to identify what goes into making the internal state of health stable and happy, we will be spinning our wheels dealing with external manifestations and approaches to management that completely miss the point.  

Begin with the mind and you will find the body does follow. Begin a collective conversation on this topic and we will find that society will follow.  Just as very few believed in the 1980's that the culture of smoking could be dramatically shifted, today's society reflects the positive outcome of a health campaign focusing on the collective good.  If we take the same approach to creating a more mentally healthy society I am sure that by 2030 we will see the same positive results.

Go Love, 

Lisa