Sinéad

The thing about health is that people only ever talk about one half of it. Getting monologues about your housemate’s headache and soliloquies about your course mate’s cold is the norm – you’ll probably join in with them. Everyone gets it if you can’t drink because you’re on antibiotics, will offer remedies for heartburn, pass the Lemsip for your throat and no one bats an eye. Because physical health is small talk, physical health is safe, physical health is fine.

But as soon as you get on to mental health, that’s when it gets awkward. There’s no revision break chats about your anxiety attacks, no quick coffee catch ups about how your OCD might be slipping just that little bit out of control again. Because mental health is weird, mental health is uncomfortable, mental health is Big and Bad and Not Okay To Talk About.

Which is strange, considering we all have it. Every single person we’ve ever met has mental health. For lots, it’s probably really good mental health, just dandy apart from the odd up and down day when it’s raining and their ex calls and they don’t do well on that test they tried really hard for. For some, they might be under the weather right now but they’re on some new medication and they’re on the mend. And for a few, probably more than we think, they’re really not doing too great at all and could probably do with a hand.

But we all have it, because mental health is not just Bad. It’s a constant process that we’re all going through. Just like physical health, it’s got its ups and downs, it’s got some surprises and mishaps, and it’s got to be looked after. For some people that’s harder than for others, because of genetics or their situation – because depression runs in the family or they just lost their job. Just the same as physical health is harder for some people – because diabetes runs in the family, or they can’t afford to buy organic, wholefood everything.

Mental and physical health are two sides of the same coin. They feed into each other and into how we feel and into what we can do. But we only talk about one. We’ve shut half of ourselves off to each other because we don’t understand it, because it sounds messy, because it sounds scary. Imagine we didn’t have to pretend we were tired when we were actually just feeling a bit sad. If we could offer remedies for anxiety the same way we could a headache – suggest a walk and our favourite movie with the same ease we suggest paracetamol.

Half the cure for feeling ill is some sympathy and an “aw hun that sucks” text of solidarity – whether its physical or mental illness. If we don’t start talking about mental health with the same ease we talk about physical health, nothing’s going to get better. Mental health isn’t scary, it isn’t abnormal or strange or something that happens to other people. It’s just one half of our health and it’s about time we started talking about it.'