Today is R U OK Day, an initiative which is designed to encourage people to ask after one another’s mental health, to help end the scourge of suicide which continues to plague Australians, and indeed, every society. I didn’t plan on writing a thing about it, but I have seen this article doing the rounds today, an article praised by people I respect, and written by someone I respect, too, but which I think warrants a critical response. This is too serious an issue to leave uncontested simply cause I hate confrontation, because even the idea of it is making me anxious. So here we go. But before I get into it, I’m going to foreground this with the following: I have been depressed since I was 15 years old. It hasn’t ever gone away. I have been suicidal before. It did go away.
I think the best takeaway from this article is that you should be prepared to follow through any time you ask your friends how they are, but also, that’s true any day of the week, and if you have “friends” that don’t do that, well, they’re not friends anyway and that’s got nothing to do with this initiative. I don’t really agree with the rest of the article, to be honest. I don’t see how this is glamorising or fetishising anything — it aims to provide a framework for people to talk about what is not talked about enough, and that silence kills people with mental health issues.
If you’re cruising along, and someone asks you this question and the question startles you into examining your mental health, such that you realise you’re actually not okay despite what you thought — that’s a good thing. That’s what it’s supposed to do, because you obviously weren’t good before. You just weren’t thinking about it, and that obliviousness is dangerous. I don’t understand how that makes the friend asking the question irresponsible. It’s like saying someone who points out you’re bleeding on the floor is being an asshole because you thought you had it bandaged and you were comfortable thinking that, even though you were drastically, potentially fatally wrong.
Studies have shown that rather than increasing potential harm, acknowledging and talking about suicide reduces suicidal thoughts and leads to improvements in mental health among those in treatment or seeking treatment. Obviously, this won’t work for every single person, and some people have the kinds of conditions a conversation isn’t going to cure. This initiative isn’t supposed to cure you, it’s supposed to help de-stigmatise and demystify the toxic silence our culture imposes on people with mental illness, and you know what? The fact that we have numerous articles like this, every year, is a damn good sign that it’s working on that front, that it’s valuable.
At the heart of this, there are two casual suggestions that I take real issue with: 1) that if you want to commit suicide, “you probably, eventually, will” and 2) that because of this, you should re-consider whether you ask someone if they’re okay, incase you trigger them into action. This is, at a basic level, nonsense logic because if you really think that someone is definitely going to kill themselves regardless, then it follows that it doesn’t matter whether you try to help them or not — at least, in the negative sense. It can’t be said to provoke what was already going to happen, but even in this hypothetical, there still exists a chance for a positive outcome, to help.
The thing about depression is it operates like a smothering blanket, so it feels like, no matter what, nothing will ever stop you feeling this bad. Looking out for your friend, or for that co-worker you see alone all the time and who doesn’t talk much, and genuinely asking after them, can prick a tiny hole in that blanket. It won’t get rid of it, but it might just give you that small bit of air you needed to get on to the next day, to feel strong enough to take the next step. So it can have an immediate, practical benefit.
That’s going off the premise that suicidal tendencies must inevitably be acted upon, which I think is a dangerously wrong assertion to make. It’s like saying if you’ve been hungry before, you must one day starve to death. I’m not trying to be glib about this; I think of mental health as intrinsically tied to the body. When I’m at my worst, my body is the first to begin to reflect that. So, hunger, on the face of it might seem like a bad analogy because I’m trying to say that suicide isn’t inevitable, while hunger is cyclical, but its very constancy is what makes it perfect.
Hunger, once you know it truly and deeply, leaves an imprint that doesn’t go away. You’re aware of it often as a distant threat, a shadow. But it can be helped. You can eat. You can take actions to ensure it remains a distant thing, a memory. And if you’re as vigilant about mental health as eating, treating it like an every day necessity, then you can ensure that when you do die, you die full. Not hungry, not by your own hand. I feel this every bit as deeply as I once felt that toothy hunger in my gut, that need to end my life. I got away from it with clinical help, with a better understanding of my body and what it needs, and with, most crucially of all, my friends fully cognisant of my struggle.
I now know I can reach out to them when it begins to feel less like a memory and more like a growing ache, a physical presence; I know they’ll provide the help, the listening, the warmth, the hope, the love I desperately need to fill that gap. This is not cookie-cutter wisdom. This is how I survive. Other people need all of the above, as well as prescription medicine, and treatment. In total honesty, I need the latter (but am opposed to taking the former, and will be until a medical professional tells me otherwise).
In any case, I stay in close contact with my friends; I don’t need R U OK Day to be reminded of any of this (at least not now), but several people today outside the norm have either mentioned it explicitly or reached out to me, which, for someone who for long years couldn’t speak about this, couldn’t look people in the eye when I was sickest, this is incredible. Small fissures in the dark which, while I thankfully don’t need them, I’m grateful exist. For other people, still locked in that unspeakable place, those openings can and often are lifelines. Saying that people need to be mindful before they ask sensitive questions is all well and good, I absolutely agree — doing so while being dismissive of the initiative itself doesn’t help anyone.
I also think it’s worth mentioning that if you visit the website, some of Anna’s concerns are addressed in Step 2, making sure you’re ready to take the step before you ask anyone the question.
We need better mental health education in this country. We need, desperately, better mental health funding, and these things need to be highlighted. I just wanted to take some time to talk about why I think the day is important, even if you feel it’s not aimed at you, or can’t help you specifically. It’s fast becoming a part of our cultural fabric and I think that’s a necessity, not just “better than nothing”, but awesome in and of itself. Something to be encouraged and applauded.
Now it’s entirely possible I’m overreacting to this, maybe it was just the tone at the beginning that put my back up; maybe it was the suggestion of hopelessness, of inevitably, which I cannot, for the sake of my own survival abide. I just don’t see the point in shitting on or mocking something which tries so hard to address the barriers keeping so many locked in their own smothering blankets until they die.
It’s also worth mentioning that depression, that mental illness, is not a democracy — it doesn’t affect all of us equally, not even remotely. How it has influenced me, and how I respond, might come across to you as entirely alien, despite having the same issues. We need to listen to one another, and damn, isn’t it great that we have a whole day set aside under whose auspices we can do so? There’s no such as a single measure which can fix this — this is true of virtually everything — nor should it be criticised as such, but taken for what it is, a guide, a prompt you can follow every day, not just today.
The next step is demanding better funding for mental health, which is an ongoing crisis in this country. Ring up your local MP, your mayors, and tell them you won’t vote for them in the next election if they don’t make this a priority. Vote for those who do. Check www.beyondblue.org.au if you want to better educate yourself on the services available to you, or the relevant facts and statistics. Call Lifeline on 13 11 14 if you’re having suicidal thoughts. Be kind to the people in your life.
