Mental health : an abused idea?
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By John Humphrys
Changes in the way we use language are often a sure sign of changes in the way we think about the world. Consider how much effort campaigning groups put into trying to control the words we use to talk about homosexuality, say, or racial groups, or what pronouns we should deploy with regard to different sexes. The aim is to change the way we think by changing the way we talk. The phrase ‘mental health’ is the latest example. Go back only a few decades and you’d be hard put to find anyone using it outside the circle of professionals dealing with mental illness. Now it is ubiquitous. Even schoolchildren refer to their mental health when they’re asked how they are. But are we now using the term too loosely? And are there dangers in it?
To many people the change has not come soon enough. Our previous failure to utter the phrase, they argue, simply reflected the fact that we were turning a blind eye to an obvious source of human suffering and unhappiness. It’s not so long...
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