The Power of Empathy on Mental Health

Despite mental health’s new popularity among the general public, the conversation surrounding the topic has not made the necessary advancements to dismantle the stigma that has affected perception for years. While more people across the world have come face-to-face with their own mental health, stereotypes still litter discussion. Discussion that hasn’t breached the surface of mental health in an efficient way. 

“People get very uncomfortable, and they don’t know what to say, especially if they have not experienced it,” said Ericka Irvin, Mental Health America of Arizona’s Executive Director. 

Irvin related the topic of “mental health” to that of “death,” in the way that it can affect the quality of a conversation when people are presented with unfamiliar concepts or have negative opinions on them. When looking at entertainment media, Irvin said that there are plenty of people who genuinely believe that “crazy people got to psychiatric hospitals with padded walls and straitjackets,” when in reality, television shows and movies have created an exaggerated and false stereotype around psychiatric care facilities. 

“That’s why we (Mental Health America) try to encourage conversations and just discussing in general, because people don’t know,” said Irvin. 

Irvin is one of many mental health advocates that is both excited to see the uptick in mental health awareness but is concerned that the conversation on mental health hasn’t dived deep enough. 

“It’s just I feel like during the pandemic, everyone was stuck at home and everyone was kind of forced to be with themselves, they weren’t able to distract themselves with the chaos of their life,” said Riana Alexander, President of the non-profit AZ Students for Mental Health. “They had to focus on themselves and I think a lot of people were like, ‘Hey, something’s wrong, I’m not doing well.’” This appears to be the extent of a majority of day-to-day mental health conversation, which is a step forward but hasn’t done much to eradicate stigma surrounding mental health conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. 

Erik Ish, a counselor at Valle Del Sol, sees clients who have been designated with Serious Mental Illness, or SMI. For clients that Ish sees, this designation is often the result of a court order, and for many, they are only seen as that court order.

Ish said that there is “kind of an objectification that happens” when under certain stress can prevent some healthcare workers from seeing their clients holistically.

“I hear conversations that go on occasionally, within staffing and things and I cringe at that,” said Ish. “That’s in the moment, that’s where we’re at with it, you know, talking about someone like they can’t be anything more than what they are, or that their value is less than.”

Ish doesn’t blame anyone for these comments but sees them as a result of an “overburdened system” and an area for improvement. 

One of Ish’s colleagues at Valle Del Sol, Liz Polen, also touched on how stigma can dehumanize people with SMI and other mental health conditions in a separate interview. 

“I think people get used to being treated in a way where they know that the people around them have a fear,” said Polen, “I think that becomes internalized and they become defensive and protective and the people around them are fearful and protective and it creates a cycle.”

Both Valle Del Sol counselors emphasized the damage that internalized stigma can cause in someone’s mental health journey. Often the internal stigma is a result of external stigma someone has encountered.

“If people only see themselves as a designation, or if I only see another person as a mental health diagnosis, it’s dehumanizing,” said Polen. “It’s in the dehumanizing that we miss each other, and I think that’s when we cause the most harm to one another.”

This stereotyping of surface level observation furthers ideas of how and why people are where they are.

“Sometimes people just feel like, and I want to be careful of how I say this, but some people do feel that those with mental health issues, they brought it upon themselves because they may have drug or alcohol problems, but usually people are self-medicating because they might have a mental health issue, and they don’t know how to handle it,” said Irvin in regards to outward perspectives on people with mental health conditions and substance use, which go heavily hand-in-hand. 

Ish sees that behaviors can be triggered by deficits in other areas of life and wants others to change their approach to mental health care to focus on what that means.

“If we look at it that way, the treatment changes. It’s no longer, ‘how do we just anesthetize this person enough to make them not a problem or lock them away in a hospital or a jail?” said Ish. Instead Ish believes treatment should focus on finding ways to reconnect people with themselves in order to help them connect with others and their community. A general consensus among all advocates is that personal connection and a feeling of being valued is essential to mental health care. 

LaJuano Brown, a Valle Del Sol client, would agree with this sentiment and has been fortunate enough to have experienced that feeling. 

“Their staff (Recovery Innovations) was the first staff that showed me caring,” said Brown. “First time in my life I’ve ever experienced anybody handling me with care, because I hadn’t gotten that from my parents and it really was like putting water on a dry, parched plant.”

Brown came to Phoenix almost exactly five years ago from Houston having lived for years in an abusive home. When she came to the Valley, she received care at Recovery Innovations, a crisis recovery center, and became peer-support for other clients. She eventually was recommended to Valle Del Sol as well, but with everyone and every organization she has worked with, she finds that the kindness people have shown her has been detrimental in her journey and one of the main reasons she chose to stay in Phoenix when she arrived. 

“I haven’t had too many experiences with stigma, you understand what I mean? I’ve been lucky. I landed with a good clinic and when Mercy Care assigned me to Valle Del Sol, I did get assigned to a very good clinic of caring and kind,” said Brown. “The fact that someone treats you with kindness, it just moves me all the way to my soul.”

Kindness is proven to be one of the essential keys in unlocking a new level of mental health awareness. By simply expanding one’s empathy, they can not only better understand the people around them but better understand how to take action to help as well.

“If we just had conversations with people who have been in the mental health field, who have dealt with mental health issues, noy only themselves but in their families and friends, then we can start to break those stigmas and the misconceptions of what people are actually going through,” said Irvin. “There is so much misinformation out there because anybody can put anything on the internet.”

Irvin among many others encourages people to fact-check and look for reliable sources such as MHA and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, when engaging in these conversations. If no one makes the effort to start talking then no one else will and the opinions and ideas people have on mental health will go forever unchecked.