https://www.pesi.co.uk/blog/2019/may/five-reasons-why-there%E2%80%99s-no-such-thing-as-%E2%80%98mental

D

o thank you.Skip to content

Menu

You are here:

1.  May

Five Reasons Why There’s No Such Thing As ‘Mental Health’

• 15th May 2019
• Benjamin Fry

We are in the midst of Mental Health Awareness Week. But for Benjamin Fry, the term is highly misleading. The founder of residential trauma treatment centre Khiron House, Fry believes we can only understand ‘mental health’ by going back to the body, getting curious about the nervous system, and helping our clients to see their ‘invisible lions’.

Your body is a chain of dominos, responding to events and experiences. We often call the final few dominos ‘mental health’, but what does that mean?

We are usually referring to an experience that shows up in something we call our mind, but even that can get confused; for example, is feeling anxious the same as being worried? Does an alarming thought, or a miserable one, constitute anxiety or depression? And if I yell at my wife do I have a mental health problem, a personality disorder? Or am I just an ass?

To sort this out, you have to go a few steps back along the chain of dominos. There, you will find that there really isn’t any such thing as mental health. Instead, there are a series of consequences to the way that our complex human organisms respond to threat; and particularly how we have adapted to respond to threat badly.

One: We usually end up dysregulated by the time our childhood is over, if not well before

When a gazelle is chased by a lion, it tends to match its response very nicely to the actual threat from the lion in the here and now. So, if the lion pops up on the horizon, then it will start to get a bit vigilant. If the lion gets too close, it will run. If the lion is right behind it, then it will kick. And if it gets caught it will freeze, almost as if it is feigning death. This all tends to work out as well as possible for the gazelle. Its body is working just right.

We, on the other hand, through a misstep in evolution, appear to be dysregulated in response to threat. This means that we can start running wildly when the lion is still miles away, or collapse in submission when we still have time to get away. We overreact and under-react. We rarely ‘Goldilocks’ react and get it just right.

Two: This changes our biochemistry

Responses to threat are like the