Ben
Ben Leonard is planning director at Family an Edinburgh based advertising agency. Last year, the Government approached Family to undertake an insight gathering project into attitudes towards mental health in Scotland. Here, Ben talks about how being involved in this project has affected his own perspective on mental health.
I started work in the mid-80’s. Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected for a second term after defeating the Argentines in the Falklands and had then turned her steel on the British miners. This macho posturing wasn’t confined to politicians. In the Oliver Stone directed “Wall Street”, Michael Douglas played Gordon Gekko, a Wall Street trader clad in a pinstripe suit and accompanying red braces. He immortally declared “Lunch is for wimps”, “Greed is good” and “Money never sleeps”. This was an era where success and happiness were measured by how much your penthouse had gone up in value and by the brand of champagne you bought. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford a penthouse and prefer cider to champagne, but you get the point.
The first time I’d seen a man cry in public was Gazza during Italia ’90. We all thought it was uncontrollable grief at the prospect of missing the World Cup final. Little did we know then about the tortured sole underneath that would later be wracked by substance abuse and relationship horrors. Gazza was a watershed in many ways. The following 15 years saw a more caring, thoughtful, arguably less materialistic society evolve, although many people like me feel more than uncomfortable and slightly indulgent talking about and expressing our emotions.
It was with this background that I became involved in the project to explore how the Scottish population could be engaged on mental health and wellbeing. The aims of the project were set out clearly; to understand how to help people attain and maintain good mental health, with an emphasis on those people most in need.
I began the project by absorbing as much as I possibly could from those with considerable expertise and insights. I talked to individuals working for organisations right across Scotland to find out what each was doing, the issues involved and learnings they had built up, both as organisations and as individuals.
From there, I went on to talk with healthcare workers based in some of the less well off communities in Scotland. I asked them many questions that they’d never been asked before. I asked them about their interaction with the public. Not from an operational perspective, but from a human, emotional one. I asked them what they thought was the best was to encourage people to think about their own mental health. I came back invigorated and not a little humbled. Here were people dealing daily with mental health issues related to drink and drug abuse, serious relationship problems, and other difficult problems and doing so with commitment, dignity, passion and a determination to succeed.
And then came the big one. I took everything I’d learnt so far and went and talked with the “general public”. Except of course, there is no such thing as the general public, just individuals getting on with life. I talked with a wide age spectrum, a mixture of working/not working, married and single. I was particularly interested in resilience, to understand what generates it and how to encourage it. I enlisted the help of a few fantastic people that I’d met in community healthcare to identify individuals that had resilience despite their difficult circumstances. I explored a number of different ideas to engage with people. They told me which ideas were rubbish. They told me which ideas were good and how they might be developed to be even better. The insights gleaned are far too wide ranging and numerous to do them justice in this article, but I can talk about the experience. Overwhelming doesn’t even come close. Ok, so people don’t articulate their feelings in the way academics or medics do, but they are genuinely interested and open to thinking and talking about how they are feeling. Self-esteem, self-awareness, control and coping mechanisms are powerful reoccurring themes.
So how has this project affected me personally? I work in a notoriously fickle industry. It’s physically and emotionally demanding. Clients can make the most unreasonable of subjective judgements and treat you in a way that can seriously affect your mental health. I’m probably not the best person to answer how it has affected me (I think other people are always better placed to judge), but what I can say is that I’ve subjected many friends, family and relative strangers to hours of chat about my experience so far.
In exploring the emotions of others, I have become more aware of my own mental health and wellbeing. I have become more self-aware (not sure this has necessarily improved any of my faults) and am perhaps more comfortable in my own skin. I had a very recent experience of a close friend opening up, explaining that he’s “struggling a bit at the moment”. Job worries, associated debt concerns and prolonged black dog days culminating in a feeling of self doubt and low self worth. In the past I would probably have laughed it off and changed the subject to football or other “men’s’ things”. But I was able to listen, avoid the depressing clich?around “everything will be fine, just look at the positives” and encouraged him to talk about how he felt, try and put it in some context, not suggest a quick fix and hopefully provided a little bit of good advice.
I have become deeply committed to this project. I believe that helping people towards good mental health will have massive benefits to every aspect of our society ~ not just the obviously related health issues such as diet, exercise and substance abuse but other less overt linkages such as encouraging a culture of individuality, tolerance and entrepreneurship.
Do you have a personal story you would like to share?
Telling your story can help others feel less isolated and help raise awareness about a range of mental health issues. To find out more or to comment on any of the stories you've read here email: wellscotland@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
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