During the Mind Media Awards ceremony last year, a representative from the charity said something which has stayed with me ever since:“People rarely talk about their own experience of mental illness in the present tense.”

This, he argued, has contributed to the conspiracy of silence surrounding mental health, since it’s generally considered much more socially acceptable to talk about a past struggle that has been resolved than a current one.

Of course, one must take into consideration the fact that when in the throes of crippling depression or psychosis, it’s very difficult to make sense of, or articulate, how you’re feeling. But for those of us whose life is categorised by a series of inevitable peaks and troughs, it was a pertinent point.

Ever since then, I’ve started to speak about my (very contemporary) anxiety and panic disorder, when I visit schools and in my dealings with the media.

It is, I have concluded, far more helpful and accurate for me to be perceived as someone who has to make ongoing adjustments in my life to compensate for my innate propensity for anxiety (or Nigel, as I call him), than to be painted as I was previously: a woman who had an eating disorder for eight years, miraculously got over it and lived happily ever after.

Last week a teacher approached me after class and asked me why on earth, when I know I have an anxious nature, I chose the career path that I have done - one which involves being in the public eye, exposing myself to the wrath of politicians, pundits and endless swathes of faceless cyberbullies.

The answer I gave was that living with a mental illness does not negate the fact that I have something to say any more than living with diabetes would.

Furthermore, my dedication to the pursuit of making things fairer and standing up for the under-represented is as much, if not more, built into my character as my susceptibility to panic attacks.

Yet, when I think about it, the answer to his question is more nuanced than the one I gave.

The world needs sensitive people

I believe what might be unkindly referred to as my “thin skin” - the fact that “things”, whether those things be current affairs, a story someone has shared with me, or the blatherings of a troll, really bother me - is inextricably intertwined with my empathy.

I care because I find it easy to imagine what it must be like to be someone else and it’s that same quality which means I can be sensitive to criticism.

If my empathy were replaced with apathy, if I grew a hard shell which made me impervious to the opinions of others, then yes, I’d probably be less anxious. But I’d also be less good at my job.

Imagine if everyone who had retained the very human character trait of being concerned for other people (and by extension what other people thought of them) suddenly left the realm of campaigning, politics and media.

We’d be left with Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos and Nigel Farage running the entire show, cackling with glee as anyone not born male, white, rich and Christian was consigned to a fate of drawing ever shorter social and economic straws.

“Ahem, Tash. This is exactly what is happening,” I hear you cry. Which brings me to my central point.

Human beings evolve to survive the circumstances in which they find themselves. And most of the time that works fantastically to our advantage, as a species. Yet there is also almost always an unintended mutation which makes us, for want of a better word, more prone to spectacular shows of asshattery.

Take agoraphobia, for example. The word, which has subtly changed its meaning in recent years, was first coined to describe people who, understandably, developed a fear of cities during the industrial revolution. Their brains simply couldn’t compute something so vast, noisy and bright because it was, heretofore, outside the realm of human experience.

While it is on the one hand fortunate that people have evolved to be able to live in a city environment, you only have to look at the aggressive and compassionless way people tend to behave when within the confines of that environment to see the price our species has paid.

Perhaps, then, when we implore our students to be “resilient” in a bid to prepare them for an ever more aggressive, binary and heartless world, we should ask ourselves what sort of future generation we are creating?

And perhaps the aim of society should not be that children sacrifice their souls at the altar of capitalist greed and dog-eat-dog political agendas, but the creation of an environment where compassion and understanding can flourish, with accompanying sensitivity seen as a necessity, rather than a weakness. 

Natasha Devon is the former UK government mental health champion for schools and founder of the Body Gossip Education Programme and the Self-Esteem Team. She tweets as @_NatashaDevon

For more columns by Natasha, visit her back-catalogue of articles

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