too much of a good thing?

There has been a lot of conversation recently about the increase in awareness of mental health issues among young people. The New York Times had an extensive piece a few weeks ago about the increase in school-based mental health programs. It has come up in places are far afield as Forbes magazine and there is a discussion about how we are overusing certain mental health teams in a dozen or more online pieces across the internet. It’s a veritable campaign of awareness about our society’s mental health awareness. 

Spurred by some recent research into awareness-raising activities by some researchers in the UK and Australia, there is a new strain of conversation pushing back on the work of the last decade to increase the comfort of people to talk about mental health concerns. Specifically, there is some early data suggesting that when people have too much awareness about mental health concerns, they become more stressed and dysregulated. There is also concern about young people, specifically, learning mental health terms and misusing them. Some of this work suggests that we should be pulling back on how much education and awareness raising we are doing with young people around mental health. 

I have to be honest, it is really weird to read about. 

I have spent the last couple of weeks reading about and thinking about the nature of our conversations about mental health in the world around me. I agree that I see more and more people with an incomplete understanding of mental health concerns. I cannot imagine why we would want to stop talking about mental health issues, especially with young people. As a mental health clinician, educator, and policy advisor I have strong concerns when we see people confused or distressed about information we begin to consider not sharing more information. Ignorance will not solve the mental health crisis we are in across the world. 

Rather, I would speak to my colleagues in research and leadership directly: Now is the time for engagement. We need this research on what is working in the vein of mental health practice. Now more than ever we need hard science wading into the work to talk about where we should be putting out investments and pushing greater investment in deeper services. If we see that youth are distressed to learn about mental health concerns only to not be able to access professional support (as has been found in some places) then we need researchers to advocate for more professional support, not less awareness raising.