People with mental health issues are being expected to “prove it” as never before. Whether, as individuals, being assessed for disability benefits or, collectively, campaigning for services and adequate welfare provision, the pressure to demonstrate genuine need, to prove that one is “really disabled”, to quote the Tory MP George Freeman, is greater than ever.
The invisible nature of mental health problems, the fact that they do not show up on an x-ray, that no blood test can diagnose depression, underlies much of the discrimination people with mental health issues face. Humans are strongly predisposed to believe in what they can see. For many people, it is hard to accept that severe anxiety, for example, might incapacitate someone from leaving their house as genuinely as if they were suffering from a physical paralysis. The fact that the problem cannot be seen makes it easier to dismiss. They could, if they really wanted to; they’re just not trying hard enough; everyone gets stressed sometimes, and so on. Of course, the help a person with anxiety needs to enable them to leave the house will be different from that of a person with a physical disability, but that doesn’t make the need any less real.
In the year since my dog, Meg, lost her leg I have often had cause to reflect on the different challenges presented by visible and invisible health problems. For it doesn’t get much more visible than a missing leg, you would think – though I have twice been stopped by people wishing to inform me, in somewhat accusatory tones, that my dog is “limping”. “Well yes,” I reply. “She’s only got three legs.”
The most obvious difference is that Meg has no option of going incognito. Her missing leg is a constant focus of comment and attention. As a dog, she enjoys the extra fuss but, as a human, I imagine it could rapidly become wearing. And there is the danger that one’s difference becomes the thing by which one is defined. Even with Meg, at the time of her amputation, I remember feeling – alongside concern as to how she would manage (remarkably well) – I didn’t want her to be the dog with three legs: I wanted Meg to be Meg.
Then there is the nature of the response, the feeling sorry for her (which I hate), the marginally better admiration (though what choice does she have other than to be “remarkably resilient”?), the need for an explanation: “What happened?”. In Meg’s case, the answer is far too long to fit comfortably into passing chat and, besides, it’s the fifth time I’ve been asked in a 30-minute walk. My favourite response, by far, is to ignore the missing leg altogether. There was a man I met on Hampstead Heath in London, coming in through the Kenwood gate, as Meg and I were leaving. “Wow!” he said, kneeling to embrace her. “What a beautiful, beautiful dog!” I could have hugged him.
It is these same concerns that lead many with mental health problems to choose not to disclose them. And to this I must myself plead guilty. For, though I’ve tried to be open about my own mental health, I confess I haven’t always been honest. I have occasionally cried off with a migraine, rather than admit I simply cannot face going out, or that I don’t trust myself to get through the evening without bursting into tears.
But while there are clearly advantages to having this option in some situations, it seems to me there are profound disadvantages, too. For the more we hide our difficulties, the more invisible they, and we, become. And the easier for those with an agenda – of cutting benefits, for example – to deny they exist at all.
If we hide our mental health issues, we make it easier for society to ignore us | Clare Allan
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