Trivializing Mental Health

Photo credit. Online pic, Eastern Cape.

There’s natural mental health and social media mental health.

Social media mental health afflicts celebrities when they lose a tennis match or can no longer get film roles because of younger actresses. For some, mental health kicks in during a divorce and they ask their adoring followers for ‘privacy at this time.’

Ordinary women have mental issues. That’s life, and you can say it in all languages. Women have mental problems for being female. It is two scoops for black women, black and female.

Religion is pro-male and anti-female. In 2012, a man from Afghanistan and his son were sentenced to life imprisonment in Canada, for the murder of his three daughters and his first wife, because they had become too Canadian. ‘They betrayed our religion and creed,’ the court heard.

China once had a one-child policy. Women had no mental health to speak of because of anxiety. Will it be a boy or girl? Society wants boys, so China had orphanages full of abandoned baby girls. Some were adopted by Canadian and American parents.

In West Africa, men are encouraged to marry another wife if first wife gives birth to daughters. In many societies women cannot inherit property.

Some men in Africa want to be president for the fun of having an entourage of six cars, sirens wailing on the road. So they take power by force in what is known as  coup d’etat. Such conditions are a mental health issue for citizens.

In corporate South Africa, black women needed college degrees to get positions white women used to have because of the color of their skin. Professional black men and women are regularly in ‘disciplinary committees’ for questioning apartheid practices in the workplace or doing things white managers did with impunity.

Drought is a mental health issue for women farmers all over the world. The pandemic and virtual learning is a mental issue for parents who cannot afford a laptop. 

Mental health is not exclusive to the rich. It's part and parcel of being alive.

This is another written podcast by Nonqaba waka Msimang.