Mental health

The last few days on my social media feed I’ve been seeing lots of the Bell Let’s Talk campaign. Everyone is showing concern about mental health. Friends are posting kind thoughts and reposting articles. It’s a good thing. It is always good to draw attention to our mental health.

Mental health is a tricky thing. We are strange coping creatures. We can go and go and go and then just crack. Or we can be tough as nails when we need to be and then fall apart when the crisis is over. We can struggle with relationships and with situations. Lumping all these things under the umbrella of ‘mental health’ is some how inadequate.

I’ve been thinking of a friend of mine over the last few days. We weren’t close, we didn’t see each other often, but we were long term friends. One morning, completely out of the blue, a close friend called to say he was dead, that he shot himself in the night.

I have thought of him often over the last couple years. My heart aches for his pain but my mind can’t quite take it in, even now. I have no answers, no platitudes. When I think of it I am just overwhelmed with sadness. I’m not naïve enough to think I could have prevented it, we weren’t that close. I am not the person he would have called if he could have called someone.

What I can do is think of him as I interact with others. I can be kind. I can try to be empathetic, particularly to those closest to me. While I appreciate the kind words on Facebook, lets never think that is a substitute for calling, watching our loved ones, or doing what we can in person. We need people. We need human contact.

Human interactions and the ability to show God’s love to one another is our best defense in the fight for healthy minds.

1 Peter 4: 8 Above all, love each other deeply, 
because love covers over a multitude of sins.