Last time I wrote about Mental Health, the BBC ran a documentary with Prince William interviewing English footballers on the challenges they had had with their own Mental Health. Since then his wife Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge has ‘zoomed’ (during lockdown) with school children to raise awareness of Mental Health and the importance of children being kind to one another. Why? Because it is good for their Mental Health.
Last Friday we learned of the stabbings in an asylum seekers centre in Glasgow. Last week the same thing happened in Reading, England. Both horrific incidents lead to injuries and fatalities. From a Mental Health point of view, it is difficult to know who has the hardest challenge managing their own Mental Health:
- Is it the heir to the throne, privileged, wealthy, athletically good looking, married to a beautiful wife and father to three photogenic healthy children?
- Or the talented and highly paid premier league footballers, albeit they work under stressful pressure to perform or be accepted for the colour of their skin?
- Or the knife attackers in Glasgow and Reading who, for whatever reason, decided their answer was to stab as many of their fellow citizens as they could before being shot dead by armed police or arrested for murder, shortly afterwards?
- Or is it the victims of these crazed attackers who, for whatever reason, fall victim to their troubled, anxious and stressed minds?
- And then not to forget the families and friends of the frontline workers, who daily put themselves out there to keep us safe?
What a wide and varying span of Mental Health issues we currently witness, on a daily basis, as we humans try to cope with our thoughts, feelings and fears. Perhaps the pressures are increased during this unprecedented period of lockdown from Covid 19 as home schooling, worries about redundancies, bankruptcies, health or loss of loved ones, are added in the mix?
Life is no longer as predictable or familiar as it was. People are challenged in new unnerving ways about life, its meaning, its direction and how we can best navigate our way through uncertainty and change. There is after all, no going back to the ‘old normal’. The Corona virus has put paid to that. But hold on…was everything so perfect before Covid 19? Of course not; people have been feeling anxiety and stress for much longer, even if they didn’t fully understand why.
However, it does seem that anxiety and stress are even more prevalent today. World unrest, new suspicions and mistrust between powerful countries, racial tensions, and a new campaign called ‘Black Lives Matter’ have added to existing global concerns of climate change, famine and inequality; all producing problems to be addressed, issues to be resolved.
All this outpouring of emotional concern is a reflection of the Mental Health of the individual, the population and of the planet. Change and challenges are left to chance that all can be fixed before it is too late. Is it any wonder that the Health of the Mind (the Mental Health) is going through such turbulence? And so is it all doom and gloom for our future? Is stress inevitable? Poverty a certainty? Hope permanently replaced by despair?
I believe not and invite you now, to be open to this same belief. While I cannot explain every detail and its reason, I can outline what is really happening on our planet right now. How these enormous changes, that we are experiencing now, have been long predicted by astrologers and psychics but most importantly, how we can come out of this great period of change, stronger, wiser and happier.
Never before has there been a more important time to embrace, understand and manage our Mental Health. Because in doing so, we will cope with the waves of change so much more easily and effectively. Anxiety and stress can be harnessed and brought under control when we learn how….
More about this to come, when I look forward to sharing with you again, soon.
Meanwhile stay safe and well!