You may have noticed that last week was Mental Health Awareness week and to coincide with this one of the CET articles offers an overview of the main forms of mental illness. All of us will at some stage suffer some form of mental illness or know well someone with mental problems. The main theme of the awareness week was to encourage the building of better relationships (see www.mentalhealth.org.uk).
Since 1979, there has been a clear move towards self-advancement and material gain, and this has resulted in a steady decline in support networks, either state-funded or community and neighbourhood-based. This decline in social cohesion leaves too many people with little or no option for support when they find themselves suffering from severe anxiety states or depression or worse. And as the article shows, many of the signs of mental illness can be kept hidden, especially when the tendency for those around us is to turn a blind eye.
Surely it is worth us all having a good look at our workplace and home environment. It must be possible for us to re-establish or strengthen bonds with work colleagues, neighbours, family members so that we all feel better placed to be able to openly discuss inner concerns without feeling threatened, judged or vulnerable. And we should all, as eye care practitioners, be able to identify signs of concern in our patients and feel confident to address them and be able to sensitively recommend options for support and perhaps treatment.
Later this year we will be looking variously at the visual implications of depression, dementia states and Charles Bonnett syndrome and I can say with confidence that we can no longer think of eye health in purely physical terms.