Think Of Your Mental Health Like Diabetes And You’ll Be Far Better Off

Because we seem to have lost sight of our own agency in the matter of how we think. The birds are back in town.

I’m going to pen an article fairly soon about why I think neuro-divergence is a nonsense term. I work at the sharp end of mental health and I think our societal direction of travel around mental health is misguided and harmful.

I say that as someone currently doing the work of another colleague because they’ve gone off with ‘anxiety’.

I’ve put it in inverted commas because it’s being treated like a diagnosis rather than a symptom. I think it’s a symptom of someone who realises they don’t enjoy work all that much and I’ve said as much.

One of the myriad reasons why I’m not allowed to work in HR.

Tact, thy name ain’t Penguin.

I won’t give you too many spoilers on my views on ‘neurodivergence’, suffice it to say that I’d consider it on par with ‘aesthetic-divergence’. Absolutely nobody bats an eyelid that we all look different from each other because we’ve all got our own genetic code and even if we’re identical twins, we don’t have identical lives.

Apparently, there are seven people out there who look exactly like you. They aren’t related to you. They just look like you. There’s only so many options in this computer game of a universe.

There’s a whole thing about unrelated twins that British scientists are looking at — and if you like teetering on the edge of an internet black- hole then that link might be for you.

But for the most part you are the entire sum of your genetic makeup and your experiences. That makes you an individual and as an individual, you are entirely allowed to be divergent from everyone else.

Not just allowed but actively encouraged.

We’re all divergent and that’s beautiful and yes Penguins look alike to humans but that’s because you’re all bird-racist. Now onto diabetes.

Diabetes runs in my family

My little cousin went into hospital a few years ago and we weren’t sure why, turns out he has type 1 diabetes. It shouldn’t have been a surprise as it runs down that side of the family. My great-grandmother was diabetic and my twin great-aunts both had it.

Type one.

That’s an autoimmune disease that stops people from making insulin. It occurs at any age and it means my cousin is genetically incapable of regulating his sugar levels. Like most people with diabetes, he needs injections or an insulin pump and has to constantly check his blood sugar levels.

It’s quite the fuck about — but certainly better than plummeting into a coma and being dead, the principal option available to him before insulin therapy became a thing.

Diabetes leads to being thirsty, pissing like a racehorse, getting tired and eventually diabetic ketoacidosis, which sounds fun but almost certainly isn’t. If you don’t have a consistent assessment of your blood glucose levels, electrolyte status, and overall clinical condition then you’ll die.

Fun fun fun.

Meanwhile, I’ve worked with a few people who have type-2 diabetes. That’s a slightly different thing. You become insulin resistant and whilst this can have a genetic component, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, obesity and age all contribute. Of those four things I’d say only the last one is uncontrollable.

We are all gaining age at a rate of one year per year.

My little cousin is a healthy guy, he goes to the gym, he works out, he’s got two kids and an active job. He didn’t ask to be diabetic but he manages it well and that’s great. I’m sure if he was given the choice he’d choose not to be diabetic but we don’t get to choose those things which are genetically thrust upon us.

Some people I know have type two diabetes… the significant other Penguin’s 94 year old grandmother for example. She’s done with it. She just wants a fucking biscuit and consequences be damned because she’s 94. My mother-in-law wants her to have the biscuits, my aunt-and-uncle in law don’t think she’s making the right choice.

Fuck it I say. Let her have the biscuits. She’s not the same as the guy I see at the Greggs carrying a few sausage rolls away most mornings.

Why mental health and diabetes are the same

I work with people who have a genetic component to their mental health. They are often people who have schizophrenia in one form or another. They are medicated by consultant psychiatrists and given instructions not to come off their meds when they go back out into the community.

If they go back out into the community and they come off their meds they will get unwell and be recalled to hospital. Same as my cousin. If he stops monitoring his blood-sugar levels he will fall over and go back into hospital.

Mental health conditions arising from genetic predisposition and even from complex early years trauma are not easy to treat but they are treatable. It’s expensive. It’s very difficult.

People can move from unwell to well and back again very quickly.

We’re still dealing with the fallout from Covid-19 because many of the safety nets out in the community were suddenly removed.

In the meantime, we’re apparently caught in a tsunami of poor mental health, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD and autism. Speak to anyone about anything and they’re able to pathologise their neurodivergence into something which either has to be respected or medicated.

Are those people mentally unwell?

Sure. Sometimes.

But often it’s the same type of unwell as type-2 diabetes and they have simply neglected to take agency in their own lives. I don’t mean that in a ‘bootstraps’ sort of way. Everyone needs help sometimes but we cannot continually offer help and ‘don’t worry we’ve got this’ to everyone because it simply breeds learned helplessness.

The cure for diabetes is not cakes.

The cure for poor mental hygeine is not complex avoidance strategies facilitated by a society too afraid to press the bullshit buzzer.

I had a therapist friend who dealt with a patient who had anxiety… the patient was also sleeping with her husband’s best friend. She dealt with a twenty-one-year-old whose mother wanted to sit in on the sessions.

She worked with a trans-woman who was being bullied by all her friends. When my friend dug a little deeper it turned out she’d bawled them all out in a public place for not acknowledging that astronauts should have ‘they’ as a pronoun because everything else was heteronormative patriarchy and their dislike of this treatment was evidence of their transphobia.

I wish I was making this up. I’m not.

In these cases, there are clear issues which need to be addressed but none of them are mental health issues. They are the mental health equivalent of eating a packet of biscuits every night and wondering why you’ve lost your foot.

There is both culpability and agency and people should learn this alongside posting memes about mental health.

Talk about mental hygiene

I prefer the term mental hygiene to mental health. People with poor mental health can have good mental hygiene, it’s what allows paranoid schizophrenics to live among us. It’s what allows people with depression to stick to their meds or their routine and curate little daily wins.

If you have type-one mental health issues, then you have my sympathy.

If you have type-two mental health issues then you also have my sympathy a little, but also a little Penguin foot up your ass. Sleep more. Eat better. Do some regular exercise. Find a hobby.

Do things that help you relax whatever they might be.

Do self-care, not as a way to combat your poor mental health but because it’s the best way to be.

Once you’ve done that, consider whether the internet is the best place for you to be. This isn’t real. We don’t really know each other. There is a social connection here but I can’t offer you the sort of serotonin you might need from spending time with family, friends or out in nature.

Nurture some nature in your life.

Keep your brain washed…. not in the scary Illuminati way, but in the same way you get into a shower and wash your hair. Pay attention to what you’re thinking and the environment you’re in and do your best to keep yourself as chilled and as content as possible.

Notice I didn’t say happy, I said content.

And if you’re wondering where I’ve been — that’s where.

I have someone erratically doxxing my real life which has been stressful and I’ve got very busy with work and creative deadlines. I find contentment in working hard and creating fictional worlds… and I needed a little more of that and a little less of everything on Medium.

Nothing terrible. Like most people, my mental happiness is often type-2 related, unlike those obsessed with their mental health and how they’re divergent I think I can regulate it effectively.

And now I’m back. The bird is back in town…. hopefully with an improved schedule and building the frosty collective.

Thanks to all those people who have been in touch to check I’m not dead. I’m not. But I have written 2 TV pilots and a pantomime since I went away. You’ll find me back on my perch in the centre ground hopefully from July through to the end of the year.

More Penguin on mental health? Here’s one from the vaults.