Your mental health isn't your identity.
Has the self-help industry become a money-making machine that wants you to stay 'ill'?
I think self-help and personal development have become less about helping people and more about giving them as many labels as possible so they stay locked into buying solutions and making wellness gurus rich.
There, I said it.
I’ve been a journalist for 25 years and in that time I’ve seen many editorial trends come and go. The first few years of my career, in the early Noughties, were spent interviewing celebrities for OK! Magazine and a much-loved question asked in every interview, whether it was about a pop band’s new album release or a soap star’s baby bump announcement was, ‘How do you feel about the size 0 trend?’
This ran alongside the evergreen questions about how someone stayed in shape, what their workout looked like in the gym and how they navigated party season without gaining a few pounds.
It was all uncomfortably and predictably superficial but, boy oh boy, did it sell magazines - over a million a week for some issues.
Some celebrities even leveraged the fascination with weight loss and physical transformations to great financial gain by losing half their body weight (a gross exaggeration) in time for a December 31st fitness DVD release. Although it was clear the wheels had fallen off that gravy train when one newly lean celebrity was photographed between Christmas and New Year clutching a plastic bag full of crisps and chocolate on a petrol station forecourt and arrived at a prime-time daytime chat show to promote their DVD two dress sizes larger than before the festive break.
The jig was up.
It’s proof, however, that trends can hold your attention, that when everyone else is doing it, it feels as though you should too and when executed correctly, they can be extremely lucrative.
I think we’re seeing this happen again with mental health. And much like that first, well-intentioned I’m sure, editorial that gave guidance on how someone might go about losing weight, those initial discussions around mental health were a much-needed and helpful way to open up a conversation around something a lot of people battle with.
Struggles with depression, anxiety and any other number of mental health issues used to exist in the dark and where there is darkness there can be shame. To hear a qualified mental health expert talk about the complexities of mental health was useful but what’s changed is that more often than not the loudest and most popular voices in this space are entirely unqualified.
With the advent of social media and with more and more people creating their platforms, including high-profile celebrities, to talk about the subjects they felt were important, the taboo around mental health shifted and they were brought into the light. People dropped their guard and allowed the more fragile parts of themselves to be seen and when someone in the public eye speaks this way, it opens up the doors for others to do the same.
Podcasts were an important development in this trend’s evolution because, when they started, podcasts were informal, usually long-form, one-on-one conversations that felt intimate and raw. Some of the best interviews I’ve ever consumed have been on podcasts because the chemistry you feel between two people with a tape recorder running is very different from how it might read in print or how it looks when filmed by a multi-camera set-up with lighting and full production in the room.