Wellbeing and the lingo of mental ‘health’

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What’s in a name?

‘Wellbeing’ is now the duvet to cover all distress; our local IAPT service even use it to describe their therapeutic offerings. Allied to its pillow-partner ‘mental health problem’. I’ve had depression on and off since 1986 and I certainly don’t regard it as a ‘common mental health problem’; I reserve that description for my overall state when my luggage goes missing at the airport.

It’s hell when depression kicks in and I have no reason to doubt its physical nature any more than any other physical symptom from which I and thousands of others have ‘suffered’. And, oh look, there’s another weasel-word — replaced now by the far more calming ‘lived experience’; and how exactly could we acquire experience without living it?

It gets worse too; the other day I was reading a CCG mental ‘health’ document and it referred to a ‘mental health illness’. What a farce as right royal as any. It’s high time for those of us who’ve got the ‘mental illness’ T-shirt to wear it with pride; after all, we don’t call diabetes a ‘common pancreatic health illness’ or a beta-cell wellbeing problem?

• © British Journal of General Practice 2020