A brutally honest, un-PC discussion about mental health

Hi guys, I'm taking a short break from my Georgian Stories series and speaking to a good friend of mine who is a teacher. Let's call her Stacy (obviously not her real name) as she has had a very difficult time at work recently dealing with an unreasonable parent, it did open up a conversation about some of the issues that I had addressed in my blog over the last few months. So with kind her permission, I have synthesized our conversations to turn it into a blog post.

Alex: Hello Stacy, could you give us a quick summary of the incident you have had to deal with at work recently please?

How do we deal with our mental health issues?

Stacy: Okay, I must stress that all the names of the individuals involved have been changed and I cannot divulge enough details to identify any of the people involved, but I will try as far as possible to give you an accurate account of what has happened. At the secondary school where I teach, there's this girl called Leah (not her real name) and she has been having a terribly hard time at school - there's something very unusual about her, she's not a normal child. She has absolutely no friends, she makes no efforts to interact with the other children. Oh she has no social skills at all and she is a total loner at school, she chooses to isolate herself from the others and the other children just think that she's weird. There's not that much we can do about kids like that, so we leave them alone if they're perfectly happy the way they are but the problem happened when her mother - let's call her Mrs H - started complaining to the school that the other children are ganging up on her daughter, that they are bullying her daughter, that they are spreading vile rumours about her daughter and she also accused me of turning a blind eye to the blatant bullying that is going on under my nose in the classroom. Now that got me quite upset because Leah wasn't being bullied by the other students as alleged, but I only found out that Leah had been going home, telling her mother that everyone including the teachers have been so horrible to her at school and that somehow, none of this is her fault and she is simply the blameless victim of bullying at school.

Alex: Aah I see and what was her mother Mrs H like then?

Stacy: She came to the school and shouted at the headmaster. Oh he tried his best to contain the situation and he had to involve me, as I am Leah's teacher but Mrs H was like, "how can you allow this to go on in your school? My daughter is being bullied and is going to be damaged long term as a result of the psychological trauma she has to endure on a daily basis in the classroom and you guys just pretend you're not responsible for any of this!" She complained to everyone from the local council to the ministry of education - she called up the local papers, she was pointing fingers at everyone.

Alex: Yeah. Everyone but herself. She is the perfect mother, of course, right?

Stacy: Exactly. I think she was afraid of us turning around and saying, "how on earth did you raise a daughter with zero social skills at the age of 15? What kind of domestic environment do you have at home? What did you teach your daughter in her formative years when she was supposed to have picked up a lot of these social skills?" But let's put it this way: one of Leah's subject in school is French and Mrs H doesn't speak any French, so Mrs H is unable to help her daughter with her French homework by that token. So if Mrs H has no social skills to begin with, then how do you expect her to teach Leah any social skills at all at home? No, Leah is the way she is because she totally resembles her mother and we can't fix that as teachers. Good grief, Leah is already 15, I don't know how to begin to fix this difficult situation.

Alex: Well, my parents are severely autistic and have no social skills to speak of as well, they're probably as bad as Mrs H but thankfully I have two wonderful older siblings who taught me a lot of the vital social skills I needed to get through life. I am assuming therefore that Leah is an only child? I think I was so very lucky as I had two older sisters growing up.

Stacy: Yes that's right. She is an only child. We don't know much about Leah's father either, we have his name on record but he has never showed up in school and Mrs H refuses to answer any questions about him whenever we try to ask about him. She would evade the question or go on the offensive, "how dare you pry into my personal life, this is not about me - this is about how you're failing as a school and not doing your jobs!" So we actually know little about Leah's father.

Alex: So what has the school done in response to Mrs H's complaints then?

Stacy: As with all complaints, we take them seriously and we investigate to see if there's any truth behind the allegations. So if Leah claims that someone has been spreading rumours behind her back, if there's some kind of conspiracy to isolate her from the rest of the class, then we will call in the students one by one and speak to them about the situation to try to see what is going on, if they can shed some light on the situation because we cannot possibly go through CCTV frame by frame to analyze in great detail how the students interact - we don't live in a police state, we don't monitor the private conversations of the students so instead we try to find out if there's any evidence of bullying through other means. So for example, if there is an allegation of cyber bullying, we will look for evidence like screenshots of conversations on social media to try to ascertain what is actually going on and who is behind the bullying. We spoke to many students and quite a few parents to try to find out if Leah was really a victim of bullying and the conclusion was that Leah had isolated herself, nobody had gone out of their way to exclude her. But then again, nobody had made much of an effort to try to include her either - such is the way things are with teenagers, you must make some effort to try to endear yourself to your peers, to befriend them, to make them like you. You can't be totally passive in that process then turn around and say, "nobody tried to include me in their social circles, nobody tried to be my friend - they're so nasty and cruel towards me."

Alex: After you explained this to Mrs H, what was her reaction?

Stacy: Of course she rejected it, she claimed that the rest of the students were lying and so I put it to her that it was possible that Leah was the one lying because she refused to take any personal responsibility for her inability to make friends, that no one had deliberately bullied or isolated her daughter. But of course, as you can imagine, Mrs H rejected that out of hand, claiming that it was far easier for us to blame her daughter than to take on a collective group of bullies.

Alex: May I play the devil's advocate here, is there any element of truth to that? I'm suggesting this because I know bullies will normally want to pick a soft target and it does sound like Leah is an easy target: this girl comes from a dysfunctional family, with a weird mother who has no parenting skills, she becomes an awkward teenager with no social skills and doesn't know how to make friends. If the school bullies wanted to find someone to pick on, Leah sounds ideal.

Stacy: In principle yes, except that this was not the case. Look, there would have been very constructive steps I would have liked to have seen taken if Mrs H and Leah would accept that Leah needed to make some important changes if she wanted to have a better social experience in school. One of my very simple suggestions would be to identify say a sport that Leah enjoyed, so if she liked basketball for example, then she could spend time playing basketball with other girls who liked basketball - we have a pretty good basketball team in our school. That would enable Leah a chance to interact with other girls she shares a common interest with whilst participating in a group activity that she will hopefully enjoy, that would be put her in a much better position to start making some friends at school. It doesn't need to be basketball or any kind of sports - our school has a pretty impressive range of activities for the students to participate in to develop their soft skills outside the classroom and somehow, Leah has never participated in any of them. Her excuse has always been that nobody has ever made her feel welcomed there, her mother almost expects us to bend over backwards to make Leah feel like a VIP at one of these clubs because she claims her daughter has been subjected to so much bullying over the years, it is the least we can do for their daughter. The problem is that we cannot give one child such special treatment because we have so many students at the school and we have a very important principle we do adhere to in my school: you don't reward bad behaviour and that's especially the case with Mrs H and Leah. They have behaved so very badly.

Alex: Actually I have to point out that even your plan may not work. Allow me to tell you what happened at my local gymnastics club. There's this woman - let's call her Bella, not her real name. She spent a few weeks as part of our adult gymnastics programme which I take part in as well, as a volunteer coach. She's a complete beginner, but that's not the problem. She expected special attention, special treatment - you see the gymnastics classes are run as a class, you have like two coaches teaching like 20 to 30 gymnasts and the coaches will pick a skill like, okay today we will learn how to do the front handspring vault and then we'll set up the drills, the exercises and everyone will participate together and learn together as a class. But that's when Bella gets bored, she would claim like, "oh that's too difficult for me, you've picked a skill that a beginner like me can't do". The coaches would try to reason with her, okay you may not be able to do the skill as well as some of the other more experienced gymnasts, but you can start learning the drills and start understanding how the whole skill is going to come together eventually, that's how you make progress. But no, she would sulk, go off and pick up her phone, sit in the corner and complain that the coaches are ignoring her. We would then tell her, Bella you're an adult, if you want to pick up your mobile phone and go sulk in the corner, we're not going to go running after you and invite you back to join the class because you're not a child - you've paid good money to throw a tantrum. If you choose not to take part in the class, that's your choice. Nobody has excluded you from the class, you've chosen to exclude yourself. She even once screamed at the coach at the top of her voice for not paying attention to her.

So what does Bella do? She goes make an official complaint about the coaches and the staff at the gymnastics club - she raises hell with the most senior person at the gymnastics club about the way she has been treated and excluded. However, she told the head of the gymnastics club a pile of lies - she claimed that the coaches had conspired to exclude her, that the coach would tell the other gymnasts, "don't talk to her, she is weird". And of course she made it sound like she was the blameless victim, that somehow everyone in the gym had conspired against her to make her life hell there and prevent her from learning anything. But what does the head of the gymnastics club do when he receives such a complaint? He comes back to the coaches, the volunteers, the staff at the gymnastics club and speaks to all of us, including some of the gymnasts who regularly attend the sessions, "okay what is this woman Bella like? What have you witnessed in the class?" He went round speaking to everyone, compiling a thick file of reports and then he went back to Bella and said, "I have investigated and we have decided that you're not telling the truth." But what does she do? She plays the mental health card and claims that she is being discriminated against for having mental health issues. Stacy, I think you recognize what I am talking about here, like even when she is totally in the wrong, she claims to be the victim.

Stacy: People like Bella are similar to Mrs H - they are their own worst enemy. Their behaviour has caused a problem but they refuse to acknowledge that they are at fault. They blame everyone but they will never ever accept any responsibility.

Alex: Actually my parents are totally like that too. I wonder if this is a trait of autistic people?

Stacy: You see that's the problem: I see it as a trait of people being downright flawed, this refusal to accept any responsibility when there is a problem, that's a sign of immaturity that I associate with kids. I am a teacher, I work with children and I can see how some kids grow up and mature faster than others and the ones who are more grown up, who are more capable of functioning like an adult are the ones who will accept responsibility when things go wrong. Then you see the brats who will lie or blame everyone else when things go wrong, because their first instinct is to defect blame - they think short term, "maybe if I can get someone else to take the blame for this, then I won't be blamed for it and I won't have to clean up this mess". But of course, in life, it doesn't work like that - sometimes it is blatantly obvious that you need to clean up your own mess if you're the one who created it and more importantly, if you never take responsibility for your mistakes, then how the hell are you ever going to learn from your mistakes and become a wiser person? You're just going to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, because you're not even taking that vital step to acknowledge that it is your fault and learn anything from the mistake. And if your elderly parents are like that Alex, then my goodness, mate I do feel sorry for you - it must have been so difficult growing up with parents like that. I feel for you.

Alex: Thank you. I'm afraid in Asian culture, we're meant to put our parents on a pedestal no matter how flawed our parents are, no matter how they make terrible mistakes or get things so wrong - oh no, like we're not at all allowed to criticize them when they fuck up real bad because that would be disrespectful. It's just so refreshing to be able to say, "my parents have done this, it was wrong - they were wrong and thank you for publicly acknowledging that they're wrong rather than insisting that I'm not allowed to talk about it because of some fucking stupid Asian taboo." I don't want to end up like my parents, I want to be better than them. Because I can see what happened to Leah - she is ending up like her mother and that's so sad. I'm sure in the case of Bella, she might have had a mother like Mrs H too and that's probably why she is the way she is. I'm thinking about my own grandmother - she didn't have the kind of social skills to be popular with her children and grandchildren, there was a bit of a language barrier as well. I tend to speak English with my cousins whilst my grandmother spoke mostly in Hokkien. My grandfather died before I was born and she has lived on her own for a long time. So what does my grandmother do when she wants her children and grandchildren to fuss over her? She calls the ambulance, gets herself admitted into hospital and claims that she is dying - then everyone would rush over with flowers to visit her. But she was like the boy who cried wolf and we began to get cynical, "Grandma is in hospital again? Is she really ill this time? I'll drop by this weekend if they haven't discharged her yet." It's kinda sad that my grandmother had to resort to that, but I'm afraid I come from a family of extremely autistic people who have zero social skills - none.

Stacy: Well, if that's grandmother you have, can you blame your mother for behaving the way she does if that's the kind of parenting she grew up with? That's why when I look at Leah, yes she is a pain to deal with but I don't blame her - I blame Mrs H, I blame the parents for having let down their children. Where will the kids learn the social skills from?

Alex: I don't think that's a valid excuse - a lot of the time we simply figure it out. Let me give you a simple example: when I go shopping for clothes, on one hand I am considering whether or not I like the item I see before me but on the other hand, I'm also considering what others may think about me when they see me in it. You see, I am a man in his 40s and there's a fashion trap that many middle aged men fall into! They ignore the fact that fashion trends have evolved over the years and they wear something they have bought like 15 or 20 years ago - that piece of clothing may have been fashionable back then, but if you wear it today, it screams, "I've not been shopping for new clothes since 2001 because my ex-wife has left me, I totally hate my job and I hate my life. I have no reason to look good for anyone." You'll be amazed how many older men fall into that trap, even within my industry and I certainly don't want to look like a sad, old, pathetic middle aged man who has hit an oil patch at 40 and is just skidding rapidly towards an early grave! Call it vanity, but I think caring about how people judge me is actually quite healthy particularly in my case as I am autistic and typically, autistic people fail to care about what others think as they become very self-centered. That's why I believe that cultivating a healthy dose of vanity in children is actually pretty important. You need to care what others think about you.

Stacy: Oh try telling that to Leah. Now that's one girl who doesn't care how she looks. Or Mrs H for that matter.

Alex: You could say the same thing about my parents, they were so anti-vanity. They constructed a narrative in their heads that vanity is evil - it leads to people being shallow, narcissistic, conceited, arrogant, sexually promiscuous...

Stacy: Wait, I get all the others but sexually promiscuous? So how do you go from being arrogant to being a total slut?

Alex: I think they believed in the idea that if a girl wears make up, like lipstick for example, the only reason she is doing it is to seduce men and so by that token, vain women wear lipstick for the sole purpose of seduction, of being a slut. So that's why they went out of their way to demonize women who took pride in their appearances, who made an effort to look nice. It's a strange logic because I think a woman can always make an effort to look nice for herself, because she wants to feel comfortable, confident and happy with her appearances - it doesn't always have to be about pleasing others. That's why they really cannot understand why I spend so much time, money and effort in dressing up for work - most of the time, I do it for myself and they think I'm vain. And you know what? Yes I am vain, very much so and I think that's actually a good thing. I do care about my appearances, that makes me take care of my body and want to wear nice clothes that looks impressive to others. But my question for you Stacy is this: can we get people like my parents or Mrs H to start caring about what others think about them? Or is this like a psychological condition which prevents them from being able to see things from another person's point of view? Is this a problem that even has some kind of solution then?

Stacy: I don't know to be honest, I don't think you're helping people like Leah if you give her some kind of medical condition because then she has a seemingly valid excuse to behave badly and get away with it. But nobody is going to want to befriend someone like that - most of the girls in school are just afraid of Leah and keep their distance from her because they don't know what they are dealing with. Leah needs a psychologist to start dealing with her very long list of mental health issues - none of her classmates are even remotely qualified to start dealing with any of those issues so the onus is then passed onto the teachers, but holy crap I'm just a teacher, I am not a medical professional. I don't even know where to begin when it comes to trying to help people like Leah, Bella or Mrs H. I suppose the easy way out for me is to say this is not my job to have to deal with it, I'm not qualified and refer them to the professionals. I want to ask you Alex: what was your secret in breaking out of that cycle? Clearly your grandparents and parents were like that - they had all these conditions, mental health issues, whatever you want to call it, that prevented them from having the right social skills to make friends. Why didn't you turn out like them? How did you change paths and turn out differently then Alex?

Alex: The simple answer is a very basic desire to be liked by my peers. From an early age, it occurred to me that it would be nice to be liked by my peers, you know, to have friends. I have observed how some kids in school were more popular than others and I was not one of them. I know what you're going to say - you're autistic, autistic children tend to be loners who have no friends, right? But that doesn't mean that I didn't want friends - I just wasn't very good at making friends, well not at least until I was around 17 years old when my social skills were better developed. A poor person may not have money, but he can look at a rich person with envy and desire wealth - by the same token, an autistic person may not have any friends, but he can look at the popular kids at school with envy and desire to be well-liked and accepted like them. When you're poor and you want to make money because you're sick and tired of always being broke, you're motivated to find a way to become rich. Thus I was lonely and I wanted to make friends because I was sick and tired of being on my own, so I was motivated to find a way to make loads of friends - I know it sounds rather simplistic, but it worked. Thank goodness I grew up before the age of the internet because I can see people like Leah and Bella simply retreating into their phones, tablets and laptops to look at stuff on the internet instead of making a genuine, concerted effort to make real friends and connect with people out there when they are lonely. There's always plenty of games, social media and entertainment online for lonely people and that distracts them from the problem but it doesn't solve it.

Stacy: The thing is Leah will eventually leave my school and I have no idea what's going to happen to her. She has no skills to function in the adult world and she will probably end up on the scrap heap of society if she is unable to hold down a job and function like an adult. She will probably do something like try to kill herself, so she can get a diagnosis of depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, then she officially becomes too mentally ill to work and she will spend the rest of her life watching day time television whilst taking loads of happy pills and anti-depressants. It's sad, but that's her future and I wish there was a better alternative for people like that - I've spent time in Ghana as my mother's Ghanaian where there's no welfare state whatsoever, you can't say "I'm too depressed to work, I want to claim benefits and rest at home." Hell no, in Ghana, people are so poor - if you don't work, you don't earn and you will starve to death. So in such societies, people just learn to be a lot tougher mentally and get your shit together. That's why I have little sympathy for people like Leah, Mrs H or Bella because there's so much they can do to help themselves, but no, we tell them "it's okay, you have a medical condition, go on doing what you want to do" rather than tell them to pull themselves together. We're not helping these people you know, British society has genuinely good intentions of course, but this kindness has been totally misdirected and misspent. It's just so wrong. We're not sending the right message out to young people like Leah.

Alex: It's so difficult for me to say this, but I feel I have to say it. I tried to kill myself as a teenager, I was so depressed that I wanted to end it all - it didn't work out, obviously I'm still here, I am still alive at the age of 42 today. But one thing that didn't happen was that it didn't change anything, I was locked up in a mental institution further to the suicide attempt, but nothing changed amongst my friends and family - it was extremely foolish and naive of me to think, "oh if I punished everyone in my life by committing suicide, then they will change for the better, I would get the parents I want instead, parents who loved me, who understood me, who took an interest in my life". My parents didn't change after my suicide attempt, everything kinda just went back to the way things were remarkably quickly and I had to learn the hard way that in life, you don't get rewarded for behaving badly, by threatening suicide or committing suicide - if you want things to get better in your life, you must look in the mirror and change yourself, improve yourself and you have to start by correcting your own faults. You cannot point the finger at your parents, your family, your friends and demand them to change because you can't make that happen, not even by threatening suicide. If something is wrong in your life, if your life is seriously fucked up, then you have to help yourself and in a strange way, I am glad that my bad behaviour wasn't rewarded. I was taught the hard way, "go ahead, kill yourself, nobody loves you, nobody will give a shit if you're dead, you'll be forgotten in a few weeks" and in a sense, that made me realize that I was completely barking up the wrong tree.

Stacy: I know it is hard for you to talk about that. Let me share with you a story from my school - quite some years ago, there was this girl, let's call her Alice (not her real name) and she was kinda like Leah, all kinds of social problems and yes she was bullied. Then one day, she tried to kill herself quite publicly by swallowing a whole load of paracetamol pills in the school - it was like she wanted to make a public statement. She was found, rushed to hospital, had her stomach pumped and she was saved. Everyone reacted, the staff at the school, social services, other students and parents - it felt like we were all mortified that this could happen to one of our students so everyone was lining up to be as nice as possible to Alice as possible. I remember one of the other parents who didn't know Alice at all throwing a party and inviting her to the party, trying to make her feel loved and special - people did really go to great lengths to be nice to Alice. She was showered with very expensive gifts and attention from everyone. Then as the weeks and months went by, people got on with their lives and stopped being so nice to her then Alice felt neglected - instead of using her social skills to try to get more friends and attention from the people around her, she tried to kill herself again. And again, the cycle repeated itself. I'll jump to the punchline, people got tired of Alice's suicide attempts until suddenly one day, Alice was found dead in the school after having actually succeeded in killing herself and we were all left thinking how could this happen, where did we go wrong. I think the bottom line was that we went so wrong the moment we rewarded her bad behaviour and had given Alice the wrong message that she could indeed get what she wanted by attempting suicide.

Alex: Do you think that Alice would still be around today if she had the kind of reaction that I did after my suicide attempt when I was around her age - in my case, nobody really cared. I think my parents just didn't know how to cope with it so they went into denial and pretended that it never happened, I got no sympathy, no help, nothing. I know it seems harsh but that jolted me out of my stupidity. Were the people who were falling over themselves to be nice to Alice actually harming her instead by being nice to her, driving her eventually to kill herself? Were they responsible for Alice's suicide?

Stacy: I can't say definitively, you're asking a hypothetical question and we don't know for certain. What we do know is that the outpouring of kindness and goodwill didn't work at all because people were nice to Alice for a limited amount of time only - their motivation was guilt, like, "we live in a nice peaceful town, this is a nice school, we can't have something like that happen in our perfect lives, this is the kind of school where my kids should feel safe." But they were nice because they felt sorry for Alice, it was based on sympathy and compassion and that's no basis for any kind of long term social relationship because at the end of the day, whilst Alice enjoyed having people treating her like VIP, she still had no social skills to try to turn that goodwill into genuine friendships - so it was like people were making sure she was okay and not going to kill herself again, then they went back to their own lives and once again, she was all alone again. It's a bit like how you described your late grandmother liked getting admitted to hospital, because then the whole family would show up with bouquets of flowers and fuss over her. There are so many people out there you can feel sorry for - refugees fleeing war torn countries, people who have been struck down by a horrible illness, people who have lost limbs because they were in horrific car accidents, this list goes on and on. Alice may have shocked people into getting their attention for a while, but it wasn't sustainable in the long run; no, you can't expect that outpouring of compassion to go on indefinitely.

Alex: In short you're saying that Alice had to do something to help herself as well. But she didn't, unfortunately.

Stacy: Yes. Hindsight is 2020 and that's my fear for people like Bella and Leah, that she will end up like Alice.

Alex: To conclude, I want to get your opinion on that story on the BBC which has gone viral - 14 year old schoolgirl Molly Russell killed herself last year and her father did an interview with the BBC blaming social media, quite specifically, Instagram for her suicide. So can I ask, what is your reaction to that story please, having dealt with such cases then?

Stacy: I am so utterly disgusted with the horrible father. The father just blamed Instagram and didn't accept any of the responsibility at all for his daughter's suicide. The fact is he was living under the same roof with his daughter whilst she was descending into deep depression and becoming suicidal - did he not notice? Did he not spend time with his daughter? Even if she was hiding it from him, I'm sorry but it's your responsibility as a father to make sure your daughter is okay and if she is so distant from him that she wouldn't talk to him, then that's a clear sign that you've totally failed in your responsibility as a father to cultivate a kind of relationship with your child where there's any kind of trust. He has failed to connect to his daughter, she doesn't trust him, he is a really bad father and even now, instead of saying he is sorry he hasn't done more to help connect with his daughter, he wants to blame social media? That's utterly ludicrous, as if he is such a great father and that somehow, it wasn't his fault at all? I totally blame him - I think it is entirely his fault. You want to have children in this day and age, you know they will go on social media, you have to control and monitor what they do and see online - that's your job as a parent, in fact that's your responsibility as a parent. I'm deeply disturbed that the BBC gave him a platform to blame Instagram without actually pointing the finger and saying the words, "it is your fault, you're a very bad father, your daughter is dead because your totally failed her. You don't have the right to blame Instagram, it is entirely your responsibility. You should feel extreme guilt over what happened to your daughter."

Alex: On that rather grim note, we shall end this discussion, thanks so much for sharing your stories with me.

Stacy: Thank you. I hope this opens up a healthy discussion on this difficult issue on your blog with your readers.