The Fear of Seeking Treatment

Matters regarding the mental health of people, can not be taken lightly. Many people around the globe deal with mental health and the adverse effects that come with it. The most important aspect of the mental health crisis is that of students in school. Students struggle the most with poor mental health due to a lot of contributing factors both in and out of the school such as stress, anxiety and depression. However, schools do provide services to cater to those with bad mental health although the issue becomes that students are not utilizing these services as they should. This is why students’ own mental health prohibits them from seeking the proper treatment they need to get rid of their mental health problems.

Conditions such as anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder can keep a person from even wanting to step outside. The generated fear from mental illnesses keep people from doing what they need to do on a regular basis. This generated fear could be a fear of going out in public because someone doesn’t like the way their body looks. The main debacle is the three of these issues all have the capability of inducing fear in the person dealing with them. The worrying caused by mental illness can make many people reluctant to go and seek help for their mental health problems.

The first and main go-to cure for poor mental health is to go to therapy. Schools will usually provide a therapy-like service for their students with the school counselor. Here, students can open up to someone about what problems they are facing. Whether the students make use of this service is completely up to them.

Many people believe that talking about mental health problems through therapy is a way to feel better. However, the person with bad mental health is not always going to accept the therapy route. In fact, they may refuse it entirely. For children dealing with issues, it is up to the parents to decide what is best for their child. Meanwhile for adults, they have the right to turn down help. In their book, The Right to Refuse Mental Health Treatment, author Bruce Winick claims, “This situation has begun to change in response to judicial and legislative recognition that mental patients possess at least a qualified right to refuse treatment.” The option to seek treatment for mental health issues is entirely in the hands of that person. This would definitely lead to many instances where the person straight up refuses care. Even if the person direly needs help, they are still within their rights to turn down treatment which can obviously lead to complications. It would no doubt cause trouble if the wrong people were not being treated.

Usually students avoid therapy out of fear that is caused by mental health disorders such as anxiety. Students fear that they will not be accepted for their problems and that is why students try to avoid the therapeutic solution altogether. The last thing people suffering from mental health problems want is to be reported to the police because the therapist misread their signs of expression. This would be a reason for people to refuse mental health treatment. Opening up to someone is a very daunting task when there is the threat of being reported and ridiculed. In a way, this could also feed back into mental health issues, as this may cause anxiety in which the person may never want to open up about their problems because they fear what others might think or say.

The fear of going to treatment for mental health can be caused by stigma. In his book, The Paradox of Self-Stigma and Mental Illness, Author Patrick Corrigan explains, “First impressions about the stigma of mental illness suggest that people with psychiatric disability, living in a society that widely endorses stigmatizing ideas, will internalize these ideas and believe that they are less valued because of their psychiatric disorder.” Corrigan believes that most people with a mental illness will keep all their feelings and emotions inside and eventually start to think of themselves as less than worthy. This makes many people feel they aren’t safe sharing their problems with another person.This leads to people suffering from mental health issues to become anxious because of a stigma towards mental illness. This is especially true for medical students.

In their article, “Suffering in Silence: Mental Health Stigma and Physicians’ Licensing Fears,” author Mehta Swapnil points out, “As with medical students’ reluctance to seek help, the source of physician hesitancy involves fears about licensing, a medical culture that can sometimes view help-seeking behavior as a marker of weakness rather than empowerment, discrimination in hospital credentialing, and consequences pertaining to personal and liability insurance due to disclosure of mental health diagnoses.” Swapnil believes that society-induced fear is what controls mentally ill people which leads to them avoiding treatment. In this case, medical students want to hide their mental illness in fear of being seen as less than average. However, it can be argued the individual’s own anxiety is what is to blame. It is clear that the condition OCD or obsessive-compulsive disorder (a subset of anxiety) is what is really at play in this circumstance. The desire to fit in and be perfect is a byproduct of this disorder.

A real-world example of fear causing people to avoid finding proper treatment for their mental health ailments would be a study conducted by author Kristin Reynolds. She conducted interviews with fifteen older adults who were battling mental health. The majority of them all had the same story to tell. They were all fearful of what others would think of them if they went for help. In her article “Older Adults’ Narratives of Seeking Mental Health Treatment: Making Sense of Mental Health Challenges and Muddling Through to Care,” Reynolds says, “We identified several main storylines that describe the meaning-making and treatment-seeking journeys of older adults: resistance to being labeled with mental health problems (telling stories of resistance, defining mental health issues in mysterious and uncontrollable terms, and experiencing internal role conflict); muddling through the help-seeking process (manifestations of chaos and system-level barriers); and emotional reactions to psychological treatment (hope, fear, and mistrust).” Even in adults there is still an element of fearfulness when it comes to seeking treatment. Like the medical students, they also fear being labeled as “mentally ill.” Another reason someone would decline mental health treatment as stated before would be out of fear of being reported. Although they may have their reasons, it should not cause adults to refrain from seeking help.

It is important to note about self-stigma. Self-stigma is when a person has a negative attitude towards themselves out of shame for having mental health problems. Self-stigma is important to note because while self-stigma could have a negative impact on someone, it doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that poor mental health is at play when it comes to the disruption of everyday life. In his book, Self-Stigma And Coming Out About One’s Mental Illness, Corrigan claims, “Stigma has a significant and harmful impact on people with serious mental illness, interfering with important goals related to work, independent living, health, and wellness.” There is no denying that stigma is real and it does have an impact on people, but it is not that self-stigma that is keeping someone from completing their daily activities. Rather, it is the individual’s mental health that plays a role in interfering with day to day life. As stated before, complications from poor mental health such as anxiety and depression can cause a person to not even want to step out their front door, let alone make it to school or work where the environment is way more stressful.

The reason why therapy fails is because it instills fear in those struggling with mental health. It is due to this fear of therapy and opening up to someone that these individuals will turn to drugs to solve their issues. Circling back, this is a result of a social norm that anything that comes across as threatening will be reported to the police or their parents, depending on the context of the situation. This fear is also caused by the stigma towards mental health in today’s society. If therapy is the best option for treating bad mental health in people, then turning to drugs is the worst option. Obviously if a person is fearful of going to therapy to cope, they will instead find other ways to soothe their pain.

Drugs are a main source of coping when it comes to mental health. Many of those who suffer from anxiety or depression turn to drugs in order to deal with the pain. The most common drugs students turn to are marijuana and nicotine. While these drugs may seem like the solution, they’re not. In their article, “Mental Health & Drugs; A Map of the Mind,” author Wylie Jones Jordan states, “New names have been coined for disorders, and synthetic drugs are advertised as a solution to every problem, but the causes are still unknown and, although spontaneous remission can occur, there are no cures.” From this quote, it is clear that drugs have been opened up as a pathway for people living with bad mental health to go down instead of finding a permanent solution. The advertisement of drugs that can solve any problem is a problem within itself, but the point is that it is so easy for people to turn to these “miracle drugs” instead of going to find something that will truly help them. Drugs will not help these individuals, but it can make their problems even worse.

A much safer way than drugs to cope is going to the gym. Many of those who suffer from bad mental health can develop a mindset so that they can better themselves. The gym has made a big comeback in the past two years. There are a lot of people that see the gym as their therapy. It certainly makes people feel good about themselves which perhaps might be what therapy is supposed to do for an individual. In Konrad Janowski’s article, “Motivation for Physical Activity and Mental Health Indicators in Male Gym Attendees,” Janowski claims, “physical activity plays a cathartic role by fostering the release of tension and stress, and is also a way to release emotion and escape from everyday life and duties…” For those suffering from mental health, this is the goal. Individuals with poor mental health long to be free from the stress of everyday life. However, the gym can still be seen as a distraction to what is going on in someone’s head. The gym is only a temporary satisfaction; it is no guarantee that the gym is going to be the answer to a person’s mental health problems.

The question that remains is what is responsible for many people’s poor mental states? The answer is undoubtedly schools. Schools may provide services such as a counselor for students to go see in case they are having mental health trouble. Schools are an essential part of a developing person’s life. In these years, schools play a role in molding the early minds of students. It is here in the early years of a person’s life where negative experiences can really sway a person’s mental health. Experiences such as bullying and discrimination can really change how a person perceives themselves. Schools are known to harbor both bullying and discrimination and it is not overselling it to say that schools simply don’t care.

What they do care about instead, however, is to be prepared in case something results from bad mental health. In their book, Bullying, School Violence, and Climate In Evolving Contexts: Culture, Organization, and Time, author Ron Astor claims, “Furthermore, new and emerging policies have unexpected social implications that have not been discussed much in the school bullying and safety literature. For instance, in the United States, zero-​tolerance measures, the use of metal detectors, and the introduction of police resource officers have created major social backlash, raising concerns about the school-to-​prison pipeline and the advent of the social movement Black Lives Matter.” Using metal detectors and bringing in police officers are the measures schools will take in order to prevent a school shooting. School shootings are the product of terrible mental health and one bad day. Instead of helping students battle their issues, schools would rather use militaristic tactics in order to prevent bad things from happening.

Playing into the aspect of fear, all these security measures being taken in schools can be very frightening to some. When the school is suddenly turned into what is essentially a militarized zone, it can cause students to start getting anxious. It can cause students to question their own safety. This may lead to some not attending school or it may stress some students out.

It is important to mention that teachers play a pivotal role in the early stages of a person’s life. It is the job of these teachers to make sure that they provide what students need in order to be successful. Arguably, teachers are also to blame when it comes to bad mental health.

Everyone has heard of or has had that one teacher. The one teacher that is ridiculously challenging or the one who doesn’t regard any of their student’s needs. In their article, “Mental Health Issues in the Schools: Are Educators Prepared?” author Amy Andrews states, “While an educator’s role does not officially include being a mental health practitioner, it is their role to educate all students. This inevitably requires an understanding of the connection between mental health issues and how they affect a student’s ability to learn and to live a healthy life.” While teachers may not technically be counselors or therapists, mental health issues that arise in the classroom environment are that teacher’s responsibility. When teachers blatantly disregard what is happening to their students, the students will continue to bottle up all of their negative emotions. Teachers are also responsible for the workload given to students. This workload can be a very daunting task that can get into a student’s head and stress them out.

Teachers tend to overly stress out their students to a point of academic exhaustion. When the workload starts to pile up, students get more stressed until the stress turns into depression and at that point, none of their work gets done. When students stop handing their work in is where the teachers start hounding their students for late work. This starts stress going again as the students start trying to get through all their assignments that had previously been piling up. According to author David Knopf in his article, “The Mental Health of Adolescents: A National Profile, 2008,” “The most common disorders among adolescents include depression, anxiety disorders and attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder and substance use disorder.” There is no doubt that schools have a hand in causing these problems within adolescents. Schools may not always necessarily be a safe environment. This could cause children to develop such mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. Since schools have such a big role to play in the development of children, it makes sense that they should share the blame for the state of students’ mental health.

Stress is one of the main causes of poor mental health in people and the school environment certainly doesn’t help. In their article “The Impact of Stress on Students in Secondary School and Higher Education,” author Michaela Pascoe says, “Students in secondary and tertiary education settings face a wide range of ongoing normative stressors, which can be defined as normal day to day hassles such as ongoing academic demands…students commonly self-report experiencing ongoing stress relating to their education, which we refer to as academic-related stress, such as pressure to achieve high marks and concerns about receiving poor grades.” Stress can lead to having both anxiety and depression, both mental health issues that bleed into other daily activities. When school-related stress boils over into anxiety or depression, it can be harmful to the student.

A majority of students today have either anxiety or depression. These are both caused by school-related stress. Schools claim to have state of the art mental health services in order to combat this, but that isn’t the case because there are still massive amounts of students still suffering from bad mental health. While it is possible that students may just in fact be fearful of seeing a school counselor, that is not the case for a good amount of students. School mental health services are just not up to par for the mental health problems of this day and age.

To round off with another real-world example, there was a study done in Australia with a system called “community care.” Community care is exactly as it sounds. The community care approach involved putting a bunch of people suffering from mental illness and deteriorating mental health together in a hospital for group care. Many patients within this program are known for their poor compliance and drug use, and psychotic symptoms. This community care is deemed by some as unsuccessful. There are some patients who would resist this community care system and put themselves and others at risk. In their article “Chronic Mental Illness and Community Treatment Resistance,” author Alex Holmes states, “…these patients do not appear to respond well enough to the interventions currently available as a part of a ‘good enough’ community-based mental health system.” The patient’s unresponsive nature is due to the severity of their mental health. While the community care system is aiming to help treat these patients, the patient’s own mental health is preventing them from accepting help.

Bad mental health is an issue that needs to be addressed so that it can be stopped. Poor mental health can lead to suicide and other things that can lead to people getting hurt. While society is actively trying to find ways that it can reach those who need help the most, it is also pushing them away even more. Though people’s bad mental health may prevent them from seeking treatment, it is imperative that society make treatment as available and welcoming as possible so that those struggling with mental health can have a safe environment in order to get better.

References

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Corrigan, & Watson, A. C. (2002). The Paradox of Self-Stigma and Mental Illness. Clinical Psychology (New York, N.Y.), 9(1), 35–53. https://doi.org/10.1093/clipsy.9.1.35

Corrigan, Morris, S., Larson, J., Rafacz, J., Wassel, A., Michaels, P., Wilkniss, S., Batia, K., & Rüsch, N. (2010). Self-stigma and coming out about one’s mental illness. Journal of Community Psychology, 38(3), 259–275. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20363

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