Has Mental Health Awareness Gone Too Far?

A Conversation We Needed To Have

Twenty years ago, mental health was something many people simply didn't talk about.

Someone struggling with depression might have been told to pull themselves together. Anxiety was often dismissed as worrying too much. Men in particular were encouraged to keep their problems to themselves, and workplaces weren't exactly renowned for asking employees how they were coping.

Thankfully, much of that has changed.

We talk about mental health openly. People are encouraged to seek help. Employers are expected to take psychological wellbeing seriously. Schools teach children about emotions, stress and asking for support.

These are important changes.

But social progress shouldn't mean we're no longer allowed to ask questions about where that progress takes us.

Because alongside greater awareness of genuine mental health problems, something else appears to have changed.

We seem increasingly uncomfortable with being uncomfortable.

And that raises a difficult question. Has mental health awareness gone too far?

Or have we simply started confusing mental health with the perfectly normal emotional difficulties that come with being human?

Let's Start With What We've Got Right

Before asking whether we've gone too far, it's worth remembering where we came from.

The old approach to mental health was hardly something to celebrate.

• People suffered quietly because they were embarrassed to ask for help.
• Employees experiencing genuine difficulties sometimes hid them from employers because they feared being judged.
• Children struggling emotionally were often labelled difficult, lazy or overly sensitive.
• Men were particularly encouraged to suppress emotion rather than discuss it.
• We've made enormous progress.

People experiencing depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions are far more likely to have the language to describe what they're experiencing and, hopefully, feel more comfortable asking for help. That shouldn't change.

The question is whether the language and awareness created to help people experiencing genuine difficulties has gradually expanded to encompass almost every uncomfortable human emotion.

When Did Normal Emotions Become Problems To Solve?

Life has never been emotionally comfortable.

• People get rejected.
• Relationships end.
• Jobs disappear.
• Friends disappoint us.
• We fail exams.
• We don't get promotions.
• We embarrass ourselves.
• We worry about things.
• We grieve.
• We sometimes wake up feeling miserable for no obvious reason.

None of these experiences are pleasant. But are they always problems?

There seems to be an increasing expectation that emotional discomfort requires intervention.

If we're unhappy, something needs fixing.

If we're nervous, something needs managing.

If we're stressed, something needs changing.

Sometimes that's absolutely true. But sometimes we're simply experiencing a normal human response to a difficult situation. Perhaps one of the unintended consequences of greater mental health awareness is that we've become extremely good at identifying how we feel, but less comfortable accepting that sometimes we're going to feel terrible.

And feeling terrible isn't always evidence that something has gone wrong.

Have We Medicalised The Language Of Everyday Life?

Listen to everyday conversations and you'll hear words that were once largely confined to psychology and counselling.

• Toxic.
• Trauma.
• Triggered.
• Boundaries.
• Anxiety.
• Gaslighting.
• Unsafe.

These words describe genuine experiences and can be incredibly useful. But their meanings have also expanded.

• A difficult colleague can become "toxic".
• Feeling nervous about something can become "having anxiety".
• A painful experience can become "trauma".
• A disagreement can make someone feel "unsafe".
• An unpleasant comment can be described as "triggering".

The problem isn't the words themselves. It's what happens when we use the same language to describe dramatically different experiences. If every difficult experience becomes trauma, how do we describe genuine trauma?

If every uncomfortable conversation makes us feel unsafe, what does unsafe actually mean?

Language matters because it shapes the way we interpret our experiences. Sometimes giving something a name helps us understand it. But perhaps sometimes giving an ordinary difficulty a clinical-sounding label can unintentionally make it feel bigger than it otherwise would.

Is Discomfort Really Bad For Us?

Most of us would probably agree that deliberately making someone's life difficult isn't a particularly good strategy for developing character. But removing every difficulty may not be particularly helpful either. Think about how we learn resilience.

• We learn to handle criticism partly by being criticised.
• We learn to cope with rejection partly by being rejected.
• We learn how to have difficult conversations by having difficult conversations.
• We learn that failure isn't catastrophic by failing and discovering that life continues afterwards.

None of this feels particularly good while it's happening. That's the point. Growth and comfort aren't always compatible.

If our response to every uncomfortable situation is to remove the discomfort, we may also remove the opportunity to discover that we can cope with it. Perhaps the goal shouldn't always be to feel better immediately. Sometimes the goal might be learning that feeling bad for a while isn't something we need to fear.

When "Protecting My Mental Health" Ends The Conversation

"Protecting my mental health" has become a common phrase. Often, it's completely justified. People should absolutely be able to leave genuinely damaging relationships, unhealthy workplaces and situations that are causing significant psychological harm.

But can the same language sometimes be used to avoid something that is simply difficult?

• A performance conversation at work.
• A disagreement with a family member.
• Being told we've behaved badly.
• Receiving criticism.
• Taking responsibility for a mistake.
• Facing consequences we don't particularly like.

At some point we have to ask where protecting ourselves ends and avoiding discomfort begins. Because not every person who challenges us is toxic. Not every criticism threatens our wellbeing.

And not every difficult conversation needs to be escaped.

Sometimes the person telling us something we don't want to hear might even be right.

What About The Workplace?

This becomes particularly complicated at work. For decades, workplaces often handled mental health terribly. That needed to change. Employers should take genuine mental health concerns seriously, and employees shouldn't have to hide legitimate struggles because they're frightened about what might happen to their careers.

But managers still have to manage.

Employees still need to perform the jobs they're employed to do.

Feedback still needs to happen.

Deadlines still exist.

Mistakes sometimes need to be addressed.

A manager might genuinely need to discuss an employee's performance while the employee genuinely finds that conversation stressful. Both things can be true. The difficult question is what happens next.

If causing stress becomes sufficient reason to avoid a conversation, how does anyone manage poor performance?

If an employee feels uncomfortable receiving feedback, does the feedback become inappropriate?

Surely a psychologically healthy workplace isn't one where nobody ever experiences stress.

Perhaps it's one where people can experience difficult situations while being treated fairly, respectfully and appropriately. There is an enormous difference.

Are We Teaching Young People That Feeling Bad Means Something Is Wrong?

Younger generations have grown up with a vocabulary around mental health that many older Australians simply didn't have.

That's largely a good thing.

A teenager today may be much more capable of explaining their emotions than their grandparents were at the same age. But perhaps there is an unintended consequence. If we constantly teach young people to monitor how situations make them feel, could we accidentally teach them that negative feelings are warning signs?

Nervous before an exam? That's normal.

Devastated after your first breakup? Also normal.

Terrified before speaking in front of a room? Very normal.

Upset because your friends went somewhere without you? Painful, but normal.

Sometimes the correct response to a difficult feeling isn't to remove the situation causing it. Sometimes it's to experience the feeling and discover that it passes. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can give young people isn't a life without discomfort.

It's confidence that they can handle discomfort when it arrives.

Have We Confused Validation With Agreement?

One of the most positive changes in modern conversations about mental health is the idea of validating people's feelings. People want to feel heard. And they should.

But somewhere along the way, validation can become confused with agreement.

• Someone can genuinely feel attacked without having been attacked.
• Someone can genuinely feel excluded without anyone deliberately excluding them.
• Someone can genuinely feel anxious about a responsibility that still needs to be completed.

Feelings are real. Interpretations aren't always accurate. That distinction matters.

We should be able to say, "I understand that this upset you" without automatically having to say, "Therefore the other person was wrong." Perhaps genuine emotional maturity requires us to hold both ideas at once.

Is Resilience Becoming A Dirty Word?

For previous generations, the solution to almost every emotional problem seemed to be some variation of "get on with it". That approach clearly failed many people. But perhaps we've reacted so strongly against it that resilience itself can sometimes sound old-fashioned.

It shouldn't.

Resilience doesn't mean suppressing emotion.

It doesn't mean ignoring mental illness. It doesn't mean refusing to ask for help.

Resilience simply means developing the ability to navigate difficulty. We can support people and encourage resilience. We can acknowledge someone's pain while helping them move through it. We can take mental health seriously without assuming the healthiest life is one without stress.

These ideas aren't opposites. In fact, perhaps they need each other.

Who Decides Where The Line Is?

This is where the conversation becomes difficult. There isn't a universal measurement for emotional distress. Two people can experience exactly the same event and respond completely differently.

Something one person brushes off might genuinely overwhelm someone else. We can't simply look at another person and decide they should cope better. But society also cannot realistically remove every source of emotional discomfort.

• Work will sometimes be stressful.
• Relationships will sometimes hurt.
• People will disagree with us.
• We will be criticised.
• We will fail.
• We will lose people we love.
• Other people will occasionally behave unfairly.
• There will be periods of life when we aren't happy.

No amount of mental health awareness can remove those realities. Nor should that necessarily be the goal. Perhaps the better question is how we help people distinguish between distress that requires intervention and discomfort they can learn to navigate.

Maybe Mental Health Awareness Hasn't Gone Too Far

Perhaps the title of this article asks the wrong question. Maybe mental health awareness hasn't gone too far at all. Maybe our interpretation of it occasionally has. Perhaps we've started confusing support with avoidance. Validation with agreement. Discomfort with harm. Stress with illness. Boundaries with never being challenged.

Mental health awareness has given us an incredibly valuable language for understanding ourselves and each other. Maybe the next step isn't talking about mental health less. Maybe it's learning to talk about it with greater nuance.

Can We Support People Without Making Them Fragile?

We should never return to a world where someone experiencing genuine depression is told to cheer up. Or where someone suffering severe anxiety is simply told to stop worrying. Or where asking for psychological help is considered weakness.

We've moved forward from that, and we should keep moving forward.

But moving forward doesn't necessarily mean removing every uncomfortable experience from people's lives. Perhaps we need to become comfortable teaching two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time.

It's okay not to be okay. But it's also okay to be uncomfortable.

Sometimes we need help.

Sometimes we need treatment.

Sometimes we need support.

And sometimes we need to take a deep breath, have the difficult conversation, accept the criticism, experience the disappointment or do the thing we're frightened of doing. Perhaps genuine mental wellbeing isn't about creating a life where nothing hurts us, challenges us or overwhelms us.

Perhaps it's about recognising when we genuinely need help while developing the resilience to navigate the ordinary difficulties that are simply part of being alive. So maybe mental health awareness hasn't gone too far. Maybe we simply haven't finished the conversation.

Because awareness was only the first step.

The next might be learning where awareness ends and avoidance begins.