Mental ‘Wellness’

Warning: This post is a bit of a rant. Apologies to those who might feel targeted by what I talk about – I don’t want anyone to feel personally judged by it. I like to assume people in general have good intentions, and any personal ire I have is generally reserved for those who are likely so far up a corporate food chain that they would probably never read a tiny blog like this anways (and if they do, well…cool, welcome, I guess?) Also, feel free to comment and tell me how you feel, I welcome discussion!!

Anyways, onto your irrregularly scheduled blog post!

I participated in a Mental Health Retreat that was offered by the college this week. It was an inaugural event and originated from the need for focus groups about research into how to improve mental health support for students. They figured that it might be better to make it a whole event with various sessions to help particpants with their mental health; likely to entice a larger and wider range of students to particpate.

It was well run, with a good quantity of quality food offerings throughout the day and lots of support for the variety of needs that particpants would likely need. But I couldn’t help but feel something a little…off about the whole thing. And I realize now that it’s because it seemed to be laregly influenced by the growing ‘mental wellness’ industry.

Most of the sessions were focused on ways to ‘cope’. There was a session on coping with big emotions and one on finding joy when things suck. There were also activites like a ‘Soundscape’ (which was really cool!) and a ‘DROM session’ (basically Drum Yoga).

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t see mental wellness and learning how to ‘cope’ as a ‘bad’ thing. It’s great that there’s more focus and attention on one’s mental well-being, because that’s important. It does generally ‘help’. And I don’t want anyone in the industry who is genuinely trying to help others cope and deal with emotions to feel like I have anything against them. I don’t. Everyone at the retreat was kind and helpful and showed a desire to genuinely want to support the students as much as they can; and I’m sure most people in the industry itself are well-meaning in their desire to help people.

The issue I find is that the corporate industry as a whole is only incentivized to help us ‘cope’. Call me cynical, but the corporations won’t care about the trauma or circumstances that lead us to having problems, because those problems and truama are how they make their money. The big corporations that have invested a lot of money into mental wellness are not going to want to invest in helping us get to the root of our problems. They’re not going to lobby governments to ensure increased social supports or affordable housing or support culturally or economicaly oppressed people (e.g. Calm app’s collaboration with the FIFA Qatar 2022). The apps, in particular, will be ‘helping’ you, while also taking your data and selling it blindly to corporations who pay them the most regardless of whether that corporation has your mental health and wellness in mind when it comes to using that data.

Now, I can’t get into detail about what was talked about in the focus groups as those discussions are confidential, but I will say that what I learned from there matches what I already knew from talking with other students – that the best way to help our mental health is to ensure that the students don’t have to worry about their basic needs. Things like shelter and food.

And I know that, while these problems are more ‘macro-economic’ in nature, and thus outside the scope of what the college can generally influence, for their part, the college doesn’t seem to care about doing anything ‘microeconomically’, either.

The school can fund the Health and Wellness Centre all it wants, and provide ‘retreats’ and recreational therapy and all these other ways to ‘cope’. But if the source of the stress and mental health problems for many of the tens of thousands of international students they brought in the last two years comes from having to work 40 hours a week that still, once they pay the outrageously high tuition they’re charged, only affords them a small room they share with several other students, while having to use food banks and the student-funded (not school-funded) breakfast program in order to keep themselves from going hungry? Well, the college didn’t seem to care about or give much thought to that when it they were accepted and took their tuition money. It’s things like this that reveal how much they really care about student mental health. And again, nothing against most of the people who work at the college – I know almost all the regular staff care very much about the students. This goes to the top, to the executive leaders whose responsiblity it is to look at the larger picture and take exectutive action to ensure things like this don’t happen.

This goes into the general industry, as well. During lunch at the retreat, were given what basically amounted to an advetisement for the Calm app. We were strongly encouraged to download the app and given a 1-year subscription. This is apparently part of a ‘pilot program’ where the college is ‘partnering’ with Calm to provide care for our ‘mental health’. I look at it for what it is – a marketing strategy Calm is using to enlargen their market share in the ‘mental wellness app industry’.

I am overly cynical to look at it this way? Maybe, but it doesn’t help when, like I mentioned before, the company decides to collaborate with FIFA to become the ‘Official Mindfulness and Meditation App’ of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Hard to feel the corporation really cares about people when they collborate with a corrupt organization that is partnering with a nation that is known to have a significantly problematic environment when it comes to human rights and migrant worker rights. Just feels like they really only care about expanding their ‘reach’ and, again, their market share, in order to become a powerhouse in the mental wellness industry and reap the sweet, sweet profits from that dominant position.

The app itself might be helpful, sure, but I hate that a lot of it is locked behind a subscription – and I worry about all the data it collects and what they do with it, and who it’s sold to. The whole just leaves me with an ‘ick’ feeling in general.

But, I digress. My main point is that, while ‘mental wellness’ has its benefits, and that it’s focus on meditation, mindfulness and ‘coping’ isn’t bad, I just don’t like how commercialized it’s become. There shouldn’t be ‘profit’ in dealing with people’s mental health. It should be part of our Universal Health Care, at least in Canada. Then again, so should many other things that aren’t as well and, if anything, it feels like we’re going backwards in that. But that’s another topic entirely, and this blog post is already long enough.