Sanitizing Mental Health Creates Emotional Superbugs

I always understood “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” to be about unintended consequences, making it something of a precursor to the Cobra Effect.

The name originates from an effort to control Delhi’s wild cobra population by offering a bounty for every cobra killed. People began breeding cobras in order to kill them to collect the bounties. The well-intentioned solution actually made the problem worse.

Something similar is happening with attempts to mainstream the importance of addressing mental health. To make effort more approachable and less intimidating in order to avoid scaring people off, public discourse is largely sanitized.

Worthwhile as it is, mental health is as tough a sell as there is: major costs now, uncertain benefits later. Mental health requires people to think about the very things they are trying hard not to think about, consciously and unconsciously.

The truth, that getting mentally healthy takes constant hard work, processing uncomfortable experiences and feelings throughout life, and that sometimes it hurts like hell, is not terribly marketable.

As a result, efforts to address mental health are usually couched in easy-to-process terms, like “stress” and “burnout,” or presented as something manageable through mild behaviors, like mindfulness, or portrayed as common through simple messaging, like, “It’s OK not to be OK.”

The intentions behind such initiatives are beyond reproach. But the results? A lot of dead cobras.

Define Is Mine

For our purposes, “mentally healthy” describes someone (a) with enough emotional self-awareness to regulate impulses and (b) able to feel all their emotions without becoming overwhelmed by them, enabling them to navigate the inevitable pain and loss in life.

This is not remotely a clinical definition. It’s a practical description of what we all need—from ourselves and each other.

Other people’s poor mental health poses some of the most unpleasant and unnecessary burdens we confront in life. That is why there is an inherent public interest in the mental health of citizens and an inherent organizational interest in the mental health of employees.

Encouraging mental health means encouraging action, just as we do with physical exercise. Let’s consider to what extent the messaging actually does that.

Ms. Nomer

If you ask organizations what they are doing to address mental health, they typically describe efforts to alleviate stress and burnout.

It’s certainly appropriate, given that they seemingly cause the very stress and burnout they lament. But that is not addressing mental health—that’s damage control. It’s like breaking someone’s arm but focusing on driving them to the emergency room.

Stress and burnout do real damage to mental health and should be addressed, aggressively and immediately. But mental health is not about work-life balance. Addressing stress and burnout may solve issues in organizational cultures (by undoing their own damage), but it gets people no closer to mental health. Rather, it distracts from what actually would support their mental health.

Mind the Mindfulness

The ideas and techniques embedded in mindfulness practice are unquestionably positive, productive, and healthy. People who practice mindfulness are likely among those who get the most out of their lives.

Evidence also indicates that it is easier for attractive people to feel confident.

The problem with mindfulness is context. Mindfulness is what you do after you can get reasonably mentally healthy. Asking someone to practice daily gratitude when they are repressing memories of childhood abuse is unintentionally cruel.

Presenting mindfulness as a means to maintain mental health is very productive; presenting it as a means to attain mental health, not so much. That’s more like saying to a paralyzed person, “All you have to do is get out of your chair.”

It Is Not OK

Messaging may be the most frequent and powerful source of unintended consequences.

“Stop the stigma” was an obviously well-intentioned effort to facilitate seeking help. Unfortunately, it only served to strengthen the stigma by calling attention to it.

“It’s OK not to be OK,” is another example of well-intentioned messaging creating unintended results. Consider the message actually delivered: There’s no indication that problems with mental health can improve, nor any encouragement to do anything about it.

In fact, it discourages action, because it conveys that feeling bad is normal. The slogan manages to normalize depression and anxiety, making them more likely.

Attempts to make mental health seem easier actually make it harder. If we really want to improve it, we must change how we discuss it. It’s time to stop being polite and start getting real.

The Frame Is the Game

Being honest and being strategic are not mutually exclusive.

For organizations, addressing the mental health of employees does not end with addressing toxic cultures. It continues by encouraging and facilitating action. They can do this by providing easy and affordable access to therapy (from analysis to maintenance) and other validated psychological resources. The ROI in performance will always be worth it.

For the public discourse, clarification is needed that mindfulness is possible only once we understand ourselves and can fully feel our emotions. Mindfulness and its proven benefits, like reduced rumination and boosts to working memory, are an incentive for mental health, not a prescription.

We cannot tackle stigma head-on—doing so only makes it stronger. Instead, we have to replace it. “You don’t take care of your mental health? Don’t you care about yourself? How does that make your loved ones feel?”

Ultimately, to engage with people most effectively first requires a culture shift around three fundamental ideas:

“Everyone needs to address mental health.”

“You cannot address mental health alone.”

“Like exercise, addressing mental health is for life.”

How is this accomplished? Consistent messaging.

Only then can we leverage the strength of the truth. If you care about the people in your life, or about yourself at all, you take action to get yourself mentally well and to keep yourself that way.

And it is in your best interests to encourage everyone else to do the same.