Most of my mental health journey I have been focused on navigating crisis, staying well and managing everyday life. Really sitting with the broader questions of mental health has felt like a bit of a luxury. However, as I started writing more about mental health, these deeper questions have emerged that are important to reflect on. As these questions inform my writing, they also inform how I walk my mental health recovery path.
This post includes some of the questions I grapple with, some things that keep me exploring and reflecting on what mental health means. My hope is that you will have your own questions about your mental health and that these questions will lead you to insights on your journey of healing.
These questions are not meant as advice. They are not meant to alter your current mental health treatment, like going off medication. Over time maybe they can inform your recovery but are not meant as medical advice or to make impulsive, potentially dangerous changes to treatment.
These questions are also not meant to increase feelings of overwhelm or cause more confusion. They are meant in the spirit of pondering the big questions that surround mental health to which we might not have answers to but may contain kernels of wisdom that can inform recovery. They are meant to help you explore mental health in the larger picture it occurs in – in our health systems, community, culture, and our families.
Each question has a follow-up question that takes the larger question and rewords it in a more personal context of mental health recovery, similar to a journal prompt. There is no specific order to my questions.
If you are reading and have a mental illness, you might want to pay attention to how your body feels as you read. If you start feeling anxiety, just take a break or even skip this post. Sometimes it is hard to look at these questions because they can evoke the challenges we’ve experienced with our mental illness.
I recommend grabbing paper and a pen and reflecting on any of the questions that resonate with you. Here they are…
Question #1: What if your psychiatrist (or mental health practitioner) and you have a different definition of what good mental health looks like?
Follow-up question for personal reflection: What does good mental health look like for you? Can you align your recovery with your values? How can you communicate this to your care team and your loved ones?
Question #2: What would the mental health system look like if it embraced alternative and complementary therapies in an integrative approach?
Follow-up question for personal reflection: What alternative and/or complementary approaches have been helpful in your recovery? Is there anything else you would try if you had access to it?
Question #3: How do other cultures describe and define mental illness and how does this change their approach for treatment(s)?
Follow-up question for reflection: After doing some research, do any other cultural approaches to mental illness resonate with you? If so, why do you think this different perspective is helpful for recovery?
Questions #4: If we embrace the idea that mental health is a unique recipe for each person, how can we create services and treatment to reflect this diversity?
Follow-up question for reflection: What contributes to your unique recovery? What would your ideal services look like?
Question #5: Some of the newer interventions for mental health require having more financial resources and time…How do we support these kind of innovative treatments and the research needed to back them? How do we create equal access to higher quality of care?
Follow-up question for reflection: Have you encountered barriers to receiving treatment and were you able to overcome them?
Question #6: How do we acknowledge social factors that impact mental health?
Follow-up question for reflection: Can you see social factors that impact your mental health? An example would be climate change anxiety. In what ways can you support yourself when societal factors are impacting your mental health? When I say support yourself I don’t mean facing these factors on your own. What resources in your life can you draw on during difficult times?
Question #7: How does the medical model and other prevalent models of mental health affect our perceptions of mental illness?
Follow-up question for reflection: How has your view of your illness been shaped by what you’ve been told about mental illness? If you could describe your mental illness without using medical language, how would you describe it? Are there things beyond a chemical imbalance/brain disorder that you can identify contributes to you illness?
Question #8: Mental illness carries stigma that spills to many aspects of life…how can we change perceptions of mental illness?
Follow-up question for reflection: How have you been affected by stigma and how has it impacted your recovery?
Question #9: Creative talent is associated with people with mental illness. Do we celebrate or pathologize this association in our culture?
Follow-up questions for reflection: Do you see yourself as creative? If so, do you consider it a gift or a challenge in regards to your mental health (or both)? Why?
Question#10: Some people see mental illness as an identity rather than an illness. How does this affect recovery? Can symptoms be seen as part of identity rather than pathologized? Is the goal to eradicate all mental health symptoms? What dos this mean for society?
Follow-up questions for reflection: Are there mental health symptoms you live with and embrace as part of you? Many people live with ongoing mental health symptoms. How do you operate in your life while experiencing symptoms? What coping tools have you learned?
These are only ten of many hundreds of questions about mental illness. These questions aren’t reserved just for professionals and researchers. How you think about your mental health matters. Your lived experience matters. Your values matter. What recovery means to you matters.
I invite you to create a list and/or brainstorm questions that matter to you about your mental health. Let them percolate through your creativity. We may never arrive on a solid answer but we may arrive at some truths that can guide us. So often we just accept what we are told about mental illness and in doing so, may skip over things that are truly relevent to our healing.
During the course of our illness, we will have to advocate or have others advocate for us to receive good care, support and treatment. This requires us to dig deeper into what our illness means. It is hard to do this in crisis and when we are just surviving. I have experienced this myself. But if there comes a time when you can explore more and reflect on your mental illness, I believe that you might find elements to your recovery within the reflection. We can be comforted by the fact that many people live in recovery from mental illness. And that there is support and/or like-minded community out there.
My wish for you this week – if you are able – is to ponder a larger question that impacts your mental health and see what emerges. Spring is, after all, a season of growth and potential. With hope and healing in mind, have a good week. 💚💚💚Meegan
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