Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl became an eminent psychiatrist. We can all learn from what he said about how to get through the toughest of times – Karyn McCluskey

“How are you?” “No, how are you really?” So go many of our conversations.

Neurologist and psychiatrist Dr Viktor Frankl pictured in London in 1964 (Picture: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Generally the answer to the first is “not bad” or “I’m fine”. The trick is to probe, to follow up with questions from a different perspective, to engage in the lost art of really listening. Perhaps we should be asking “why are you...?”

After two years of ‘this’, which is how I refer to it without using the ‘you know what’ word, we are about to enter a new phase which I want to be more hopeful, more connected.

But it would neglectful to think the last few years have not left wounds that may take time to heal. Opportunities lost for our young people, whom I feel so very sorry for, elderly who have left this life alone and without someone they love holding their hand.

I see my own daughter whose life has become smaller, with the chances to meet new people and new experiences, which are what your late teens and early twenties are about, all but gone.

There are others for whom this period will be their ‘annus horriblis times two’ whose mental health has been decimated. Feelings of worthlessness, disconnectedness, and inability to experience any joy will have been the defining experience. If they are lucky, they will have someone to listen, to notice the decline, to support and intervene, but that isn’t always the case.

Sometimes the decline into a chasm can be insidious, gradual, unnoticed by those around them and sometimes fatal. I follow a wonderful woman on Twitter, whom I was lucky enough to meet in person a few times, whose son took his life over this period.

Her posts are raw and difficult to read sometimes. There will be people who are living with a loved one or a child in crisis, for whom the thought that they may take their own life is the undercurrent which has them in a state of perpetual fear.

For those in the justice system that I work within, their mental state may have been exacerbated by a wait for a trial, a life in limbo waiting for a system to recover so that they may move on if possible.

For others, it’s been time on remand, enduring long periods of isolation with no family visits, and trepidation about impending court dates yet to be set.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote about those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear almost any ‘how’. The ‘why’ for Frankl was his wife Tilly, as he endured torture and starvation.

He became an eminent psychiatrist and his works are as relevant now as they ever were. Having a ‘why’ to live and recover is key, yet even that can be lost.

There are, however, lights in the darkness; a great GP, a counsellor, cognitive-behavioural therapy, support helplines run by the likes of Breathing Space and Mind. It is only when we are beleaguered, bushed and broken that we lose our sense of agency and control – it is helplessness that breeds hopelessness.

Recovery is not an explosive or revolutionary process, it is about the rediscovery of things lost. We recover our hope through the small things and in reaching out to others.

Karyn McCluskey is chief executive of Community Justice Scotland

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