Shropshire Star comment: Speak out about mental health
When there is a cry for help, compassionate people respond. But if there is no cry, how can they know that their help is needed?
A physical injury usually advertises itself through a limp, disability, bandages, or whatever.
Those who are ill will look pale or out of sorts to others, have nausea or sickness, and may repair to bed.
You know there is something wrong with them.
In the realms of mental health, those enduring those struggles may show nothing of what they are going through, and may do their very best to ensure that nothing shows.
Outwardly they are “normal.” Yet behind the facade they are breaking.
It is one of the great challenges in dealing with mental health matters, and one reason why figures showing a rise of almost 17 per cent in cases of depression and anxiety in Shropshire, with the exception of Telford, in the past three years is a matter for concern and also for encouragement at the same time.
The figures are getting worse, but at least we know about it.
This is the cry for help that can be heard.
In some areas there is a rapid rise in the numbers seeking help from their GPs. Again, that is something that can be welcomed.
There is a rising appreciation of the fact that these things can have a devastating effect on quality of life and in some tragic cases do bring the end of life.
Mental health, once at the margins and surrounded by stigma, is moving into the mainstream, helped by brave people speaking.
Living in beautiful rural Shropshire is not the tonic you might think, as the farming community is particularly affected.
Farming can be a remote and isolated profession in more ways than one.
There may be nobody to turn to and you plough on and try to cope well beyond those limits when coping mechanisms are breaking down.
The same figures which show a rise in depression and anxiety across Shropshire also show that in Telford there has been a small drop, which demonstrates just how difficult it is to interpret information like this.
Nevertheless, things look to be going in the right direction in terms of a rise in levels of awareness, and the erosion of those feelings of shame and embarrassment which prevented people in the past from seeking help.
