So Many, Yet So Little Done
Florence Goddard, BA Politics and Development Studies
Trigger Warning: Article deals with issues of mental health and mentions suicide.
As a fairly privileged middle class student of a notoriously left-wing university I spend most of my time in the world of radical idealism, safe spaces and tolerance that is SOAS. It’s definitely not perfect, but it is certainly better than what goes on in the rest of my world. Over the summer, I was reminded of just how different these two worlds are.
Working on a youth development program for 15-17 year olds, I sat through one of the most excruciatingly uncomfortable hours of my life. It started with a few jokes. Just a bit of casual sexism. It was annoying and uncomfortable obviously, but nothing I hadn’t heard before. We were listening to a talk by a local policeman who had come in to speak to the young people about anti-social behaviour. Now I realise that policeman are not exactly renowned for their sensitivity, and I certainly wasn’t expecting the content and trigger warnings that we’re used to at SOAS – but I was expecting some common decency at least.
Unfortunately what followed was an hour of agonising jokes about homeless people, drug addicts, rape and mental health problems. Asked what the funniest case he’d ever had was, he responded with a delightful story about a woman whom he’d nicknamed ‘crazy frog’ due to her numerous mental health problems and physical appearance.
Apparently, she couldn’t have been anorexic (as she said she was), because she was ‘too fat’ and therefore nothing but a joke. Not an extremely vulnerable woman who was probably facing difficulties completely unimaginable to him. Whilst it might be necessary to keep a certain level of distance – and maybe a sense of humour – in a job like his, there is an overwhelming difference between being a bit blasé and being actively offensive.
Particularly when you’re speaking to a group of vulnerable young adults whose experiences range from mental health difficulties, including eating disorders, to abuse victims to having witnessed the murders of family members.
Among UK teenagers, rates of depression and anxiety have increased by 70% in the past 25 years. This is partly due to a large increase in diagnoses, but it’s still a staggering amount.
Imagine you are fifteen and you have anorexia, depression and anxiety. You constantly think about food, your body, what others think of you and how fat you are. And then someone tells a joke like that.
It triggers a panic attack. You feel fat, ugly and alone.
You hate yourself. You want to die. You run out of the building and in to the middle of the road convinced that you’re going to kill yourself. At the last minute you change your mind and narrowly avoid being hit by a truck.
Later, you try to strangle yourself and someone finds you unconscious on the bathroom floor. Of course the policeman had no way of knowing what the ramifications of his ‘little’ joke would be. But that just goes to show the level of ignorance and stigma which surrounds mental illness.
As a person who has experienced mental health problems I cannot emphasize enough the importance of removing the stigma and stereotypes which are enforced upon mental illness. Stigma reduces diagnoses and treatment of mental illness, leads to higher suicide rates and encourages others to victimise and make fun of those who suffer from it.
For a young person who may only just be coming to terms with their illness – as well as experiencing a billion other hormone-driven problems – comments like these can have far reaching consequences.
Roughly 19% of the UK population defines themselves as having a mental or physical disability – and 1 in 4 of us will experience mental health problems at some point in our lives.
There is no excuse for ignorance, particularly in a job which deals with some of society’s most vulnerable people. The situation has improved, with high profile figures such as Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson talking about their own experiences with mental illness and initiatives like the Time to Change Pledge which SOAS signed just over a year ago.
But in a country with arguably one of the best healthcare systems in the world (for now at least) it’s unbelievable that 6.2% of 16-24 year olds will have attempted suicide at some point in their lifetime.
The situation in other countries is far worse. In developing countries, close to 90% of people with mental health problems go untreated. Even at SOAS there is so much further to go. Only 10.6% of SOAS students and just 2.7% of staff define themselves as disabled. If young people with mental health problems are to have equal opportunities and experiences, we need to start by showing them that it can be done.
It’s very difficult to argue that an institution does not discriminate against disability when the statistics tell us otherwise. I’d like SOAS to be an environment where anyone, staff or student, can talk about mental illness without fearing a negative response from their peers or from the institution.
Considering SOAS’ reputation as a space of tolerance and diversity, we should and could be doing so much better.
