Darren McGarvey: Sinead O'Connor's mental health raises questions

Sinead OConnor shared her mental health crisis on social media

Unsurprisingly, for those with even the vaguest sense of the troubled artist’s career, the coverage had little to do with her music. The 50-year-old sparked concern after sharing a video on social media claiming she was suicidal and living alone in a Travelodge. Since then, O’Connor has been admitted to hospital after posting another video, telling her fans that she is “totally destroyed”.

O’Connor appears to be in the grip of a mental health crisis; something many of us will experience at some point, either directly or through a loved one or partner. In Scotland we are no strangers to poor mental health. In the ten-year period between 2003 and 2013, prescriptions for depression rose by 54 per cent. Over three quarters of a million people were given anti-depressants in 2014.

Since then the problem has only become worse. So what, as a society, are we doing wrong?

When it comes to mental health – as with everything – people have very strong opinions about the causes and solutions. O’Connor’s recent public breakdown ignited fierce debate about what constitutes mental illness as well as how to deal with it. One school of thought believes people with mental illnesses are victims and need to be cared for. Another believes this approach is what leads to people self-diagnosing as mentally ill when really what they need is a kick up the backside.

Mental health terminology has permeated every aspect of our language and culture. We’ve been told, should we experience any unusually potent emotions like fear, anxiety or depression, that we might be ill and must seek medical attention. It’s created an expectation in us that the answers to our psychological and emotional problems lie outside ourselves.

During her video, O’Connor emphasised that she needed to be “looked after”. Her demeanour suggested she was simply waiting for help to arrive and that until it did, there was nothing else she could do to support herself. It’s clear she was deeply invested in the notion of her helplessness; creating an expectation, within her, that the solution to her problem lay only within the competence of professionals. Now this may be true for many people, but having been there myself, it’s also true that I often believed myself helpless when, in reality, that belief was, itself, a symptom of my poor mental health.

We still tend to treat symptoms and not causes. We think about depression as a malign invader of our mind that has a will of its own. Medical professionals talk about “chemical imbalances” that lead to feelings of worthlessness, lethargy and even suicidal thoughts. But we rarely discuss what might bring about these chemical imbalances in the first place. They are often regarded as random neurological events when in truth they can be triggered by events in our lives, some which we have no control over and some which we do.

This presents us with a grey area; an overlap between recognising the challenges a person is experiencing subjectively, during their crisis, and the thornier issue of trying to establish the truth of the matter. As with many contentious areas, there is a constant tension between the two that makes thinking and speaking honestly about mental illness difficult. On one hand we have the interests of the person in crisis, who requires care and sensitivity. On the other, we have a mental health epidemic that seems to get worse the more money we throw at it. In my own experience, what has made the difference is my willingness to examine my own thoughts, feelings, behaviour and lifestyle choices before going to a doctor. But that doesn’t sit well with everyone.

It’s become taboo – offensive, even – to suggest that we, as individuals, may have a role to play in the maintenance of our own mental health and that often, negative thinking habits and the lifestyles that grow up out of them can create the sort of dodgy brain chemistry that develops into a crisis.

This is not to say someone can think their way out of a schizophrenic illness, or that we should start treating depression with tough-love pep talks. However, temporal psychological problems like anxiety and depression can, in many cases, be mitigated or transcended completely when the sufferer develops a broader awareness of the root causes of the problem and acts to move beyond it.

Think of all the crap we eat, the hours we squander on social media, the booze we go through and the “painkillers” we take for hangovers. Given the sheer toxicity in the food chain alone, it strikes me as bizarre that we would diagnose anybody with depression or anxiety without first asking some basic questions about their lifestyle or thinking habits.

Questions like “How much do you drink?” and “How much exercise do you get?” I’m well aware this may offend some of you, but beneath the impulse to become outraged, you know exactly what I’m getting at. Of course, that sort of straight talking is no use to someone in crisis. This is where patience, compassion and empathy come in. Recovery from a mental health crisis is about supporting someone to a point where they can begin to accept some responsibility for how they think, feel and live.

But there’s a time and place for that and it’s not while the person is literally telling everyone they are suicidal.

• Darren McGarvey is also known as Loki, a Scottish rapper and social commentator @lokiscottishrap