The topic for today's #sachat was "Mental Health of Student Affairs professionals," as voted upon by participants and followers of @The_SA_Blog. I intended to participate, as I usually do when I'm free, and this topic was of particular interest: I have an undergraduate degree in psychology in addition to my graduate degree in student affairs; I'm married to a counselor, and there's mental illness in my family. So with that in mind, and knowing that "mental health" means different things to different people, I asked a simple question:
Question: Are we talking "Mental Health" as in "I don't feel at my best when...", stress, etc., or actual psychopathology? #sachat
Never was there an answer. In defense of this session's mod, it was quite clear in her questioning that she was allowing the community to take ownership in the definition, but there was quite a bit of confusion. Consider that "health" has two well-accepted definitions: One is the overarching field, while the other is [good] health, as in being healthy. The same is true with mental health, which was pointed out by folks engaged in the chat sharing two different definitions from two different NIH sources. As such, in the conversation, some were referring to things such as work-life balance and on-the-job stress, while others were speaking counseling and medication.
The distinction is, to me a big one; the methods for dealing with both are quite different. Many in our field are qualified/trained in counseling-related fields, but in most cases, we are not counselors. The trouble is that we are a helping profession, sometimes to a fault. It is important for us to know that which is beyond us and needs referring out, and depending on which definition of mental health you are answering for, those answers can be different. To compound things, it seemed to me that when speaking of simple stress, platitudes regarding work-life balance, taking time to oneself, and destressing techniques abounded, making bits of the conversation seem like a chat with a pullstring toy. I was sharing this frustration both off of the tag on Twitter and in a chat window; as I said there, "I've probably dropped more curses into a chat window in one sitting in the past hour than I ever have on my work account."
Why, it was enough to drive a guy mad.
The distinction is, to me a big one; the methods for dealing with both are quite different. Many in our field are qualified/trained in counseling-related fields, but in most cases, we are not counselors. The trouble is that we are a helping profession, sometimes to a fault. It is important for us to know that which is beyond us and needs referring out, and depending on which definition of mental health you are answering for, those answers can be different. To compound things, it seemed to me that when speaking of simple stress, platitudes regarding work-life balance, taking time to oneself, and destressing techniques abounded, making bits of the conversation seem like a chat with a pullstring toy. I was sharing this frustration both off of the tag on Twitter and in a chat window; as I said there, "I've probably dropped more curses into a chat window in one sitting in the past hour than I ever have on my work account."
Why, it was enough to drive a guy mad.
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