Approach to mental health in different cultures

 Throughout my life so far, I visited many countries and lived in three different places: Poland, USA and UK. All of those countries have different approaches to different things. People eat differently, people learn differently, education system differs, people act in different ways as well. Poland and the UK are very close on the map, but to be completely honest, I see more similarities between the UK and the USA than if I compared those countries to Poland. Generally it seems like the UK wants to become the America of Europe, and I'll leave to everyone separately to decide whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. 

Firstly, I wanted to focus in how mental health is viewed in Poland because most of my experience comes from my home country. It is a taboo subject within the Polish community. According to the police statistics, mental health issues are the main cause of suicide in Poland (medexpress, 2020). Sadly, due to religious government and culture in the country, Poland is not a country that is open to change. Changes are usually frowned upon by elderly and and people tend not to believe in mental health issues. Stereotypes are making people avoid getting professional help.

 Another big problem is counseling in schools. Every school in Poland has a counselor who is there to help out in any sort of situation. The research has shown that students not always can trust their school counselor (Nowakowska and Przewłocka, 2015). From my own experience I can say that school counselors were never people students could trust. They would always say how discreet they would be and then when they find something out they would call parents or teachers and from a medium-sized problem, the problem would escalate and get to the point where students could not deal with it. I have never met a school counselor in Poland that I would trust with any of my problems. 

What is important here is the education system in Poland as well. The education system is a lot different than the one in the USA or in the UK for what I have noticed. Polish schools are ridiculously stressful and the students need help to stay sane with the amount of pressure on them, however when the person the school provides for the given problem is completely not helpful, the problems easily escalate. 

Depression

As the graphic above says, only half of the people living with depression obtain treatment for it. Reasons for that can be many, but I realize that some people do not get help because they are too afraid to ask for it.

On average in the United States someone dies from suicide every 11 minutes (Save, 2021). It is very scary to think how many people commits a suicide a day. It shows how little help people get. I believe that if mental health was not something people fear to talk about, there would be more people getting some sort of help that would possibly prevent them from suicide. According to Mental Health America (2021), 30 to 70 percent of people who commits a suicide, suffer from major depression or bipolar disorder. I think it is very interesting that it is between 30 and 70. It could possibly show that many people are not diagnosed with their illness and this could be because people do not speak up about their personal problems. I think this goes back to taboo and how mental health is not something people talk about often. 

One thing I realized when living in the United States, is that the school counselor is a person students trust. It is a person who is there to actually help and if someone for example misses a class because they were with her, it is a valid reason for an absence in class. I think it is good that the students have someone they can talk to. This is something Polish system is lacking. I wish I had someone like that in my school in Poland. I also remember how as a class we had a lesson with the counselor about anxiety and how to deal with it and how to get help and what resources are there at school. I think in this case, the American system is reasonable. However, the fact that there are students who do not get enough help and it results in for example school shootings. This is something we never have in Poland because we have gun control. It is different in the United States and I am not going to carry a digression here whether there should be a gun control or not, but what is important to see is that the students who decide to use gun violence at school need to be really hurt or really not dealing well with their emotions and it is the system that is letting them down. Still shows that if they don't get the help they need, it means that it is not talked about enough. 

Lastly I wanted to look at my personal experiences in the United Kingdom and some research on statistics I did. 

Suicide rate in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2000 to 2019

As visible on the graph above, from year 2000 to year 2019, almost nothing has changed in the UK when it comes to suicide. I think it is not a good thing. It's good that the rate is not increasing but I personally think it should be decreasing with the education and possibilities there are now but were not accessible 20 years ago. At the same time, what was not around 20 years ago is social media. Social media causes a lot of mental health issues and I think that because of things that have changed throughout the years, really nothing has changed in terms of the number of suicide.

According to National Children's Bureau (2021) in an average-sized classroom, 5 children will have a diagnosed mental health condition, 7 will experience bullying and 8 will experience physical violence, sexual abuse or neglect. This is some serious data that really surprised me. I was mostly not aware of the bullying problem in the UK. I knew it was a problem in the States and I was aware of it in the UK as well but I did not realize it was to this scale. This is a problem that is not that big in Poland. Bullying can cause lots of different kinds of mental health issues and for example it can cause a child to attempt a suicide. Kids often feel ashamed of being bullied so they do not speak up. 

A one thing I noticed constantly repeating in all of my thoughts and analyzing is that people do not speak up when they need help because they feel either afraid or ashamed. This is why I want to create an animation that raises awareness of mental health. I think it is critical that people start talking about how they feel and getting help when they need it. I think this research helped me realize that the problem is present in different countries and it needs to be addressed all over the world. 

Reference list:

National Children's Bureau (2021), Schools' Wellbeing Partnership. Available at: https://www.ncb.org.uk/what-we-do/improving-practice/wellbeing-mental-health/schools-wellbeing-partnership?gclid=Cj0KCQjw4ImEBhDFARIsAGOTMj92jZkypcQDa-rc_-Fpyq3gpgazfLb337uXlD6COLS0mnyzL6WHVhsaAo_sEALw_wcB (Accessed: 23/04/2021).

Nowakowska, A. and Przewłocka, J. (2015), Szkoła oczami uczniów: relacje z nauczycielami i kolegami oraz przemoc szkolna. Available at: http://produkty.ibe.edu.pl/docs/inne/ibe-analizy-07-2015-raport-szkola-oczami-uczniow.pdf

Medexpress (2020), Zaburzenia psychiczne najczęstszym powodem zamachów samobójczych w Polsce. Available at: https://www.medexpress.pl/zaburzenia-psychiczne-najczestszym-powodem-zamachow-samobojczych-w-polsce/80101 (Accessed: 23/04/2021).

Mental Health America (2021), Suicide. Available at: https://mhanational.org/conditions/suicide (Accessed: 23/04/2021).

Save (2021) Suicide Facts. Available at: https://save.org/about-suicide/suicide-facts/  (Accessed: 23/04/2021).