Opinion: Visibility is not related to severity
In elementary school, my class lined up outside the building in the morning while we waited to go inside. One day, I couldn’t find my best friend before class. The bell rang, so I lined up without him and filed inside with everyone else.
To my surprise, my friend was already in the classroom sitting at his desk. A bright blue cast covered his right arm. We rushed over to him, asked for the story of what happened and took turns signing his cast.
Around the same time, my grandma began showing signs of dementia. I would always look forward to her visits because she would tell us stories about her childhood. But as a kid with no understanding of dementia, I only knew something was wrong when her stories got shorter and when she stopped telling them altogether.
She always refuses help. Her stubbornness makes it difficult to get her the help she needs. Today, she looks about the same — maybe older and thinner — but she doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t even know who her husband or her children are.
In one of the first weeks of high school, I briefly reconnected with an old friend in a PE class. He did the awkward exercises with the rest of us, smiling with the rest of us. He looked like the same kid I knew in middle school.
He committed suicide a few days later.
We like drawing lines between physical and mental problems. We even draw lines between visible physical issues and invisible physical issues. Dementia-ridden grandparents and depression-ridden teenagers can’t put on a bright blue cast, so most of the time, no one knows anything is wrong. This problem is more complicated than a change in mindset though, it is ingrained in how insurances cover health problems and the system nurses and doctors use to treat us.
But Utah State University professor and nurse practitioner Dave McOmber said the university uses evidence-based research to teach students that the mind and body are connected.
“Why are we chopping people’s heads off?” McOmber said. “Eliminate the idea that physical health and mental health are different.”
Instead, he said we should adopt the encompassing idea of “personal health.”
All mental illness is rooted in issues with physical processes, whether visible or invisible. Monique Frazier, a clinical psychologist and therapist with USU’s Counseling and Psychological Services, agrees that our mental and physical health are more connected than many people think they are. She said it may be because mental issues, historically, have come second to physical issues.
“For decades people have been much more aware and valuing of physical health. Mental health has been a bit forgotten,” Frazier said.
Issues such as depression and anxiety-related disorders should be treated with the same level of respect as broken bones and other highly visible issues. Obviously, we stay home and get rest when we have contagious illnesses. If we have visible medical problems, we still stay home and get the rest and care you need to feel 100 percent again.
Why is it any different for invisible mental problems? We take time to take care of our bodies. Why are we often not allowed the same time to take care of our minds? It’s all the same. It’s all our own health we have responsibility for.
“Mental health problems can range to mild and cumbersome and manageable to debilitating,” Frazier said. “Severe mental problems make it so you can’t work.”
In many cases, those who suffer from invisible, neurological health problems don’t even know something is wrong, no matter how debilitating. Frazier said education is an important way to prevent this. The more we know about invisible issues, the faster we can spot them in ourselves and others and the earlier we can find ways to prevent or manage them.
In a different way, education is also important for delaying the onset of dementia and making it more manageable. According to McOmber, mental exercises, such as math games and Sudoku puzzles, are important for keeping our brains sharp and delaying unhealthy synaptic pruning.
In normal brain development, some underused junctions are pruned, much like you should prune your tree to support healthy growth. With dementia, synapses in the brain are pruned too quickly and too often, especially in areas associated with memory and emotion. Keeping your brain active has been a proven way to help delay this pruning.
Invisible conditions and mental health problems shouldn’t be used as an excuse. This helps no one. It only feeds hurtful beliefs about the illegitimacy of those disorders. You are still expected to take preventative measures and do what you can to help yourself and get more help if you need it. This further prioritizes education about mental health and what signs to look for.
But discrimination between health issues is neither constructive nor healthy. A bright blue cast shouldn’t be the reason one condition gets more attention from both ourselves and others.
William Bultez is a broadcast journalism major from Idaho. He is a film fanatic, dog lover and music enthusiast who enjoys the outdoors.
—william.bultez@usu.edu
@willistheginger