The importance of separating a Person from a mental Health Problem

Mental health issues are complex. In many cases, they can dramatically alter a person’s behaviour, mood, and personality, making it easy to confuse the individual with the condition they’re battling against. This can lead to frustration, miscommunication, and a sense of powerlessness for the person trying to help. It’s really important to separate the person from their mental health problem, to provide the support they really need and ensure that, in trying to help, we’re not actually colluding with the mental health issue and allowing it to grow. Providing constructive support for someone suffering a mental health problem can often be counterintuitive. Fighting against mental health problems is hard work and can often feel very distressing.

Mental Health Problems are Hostile

Mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) create immense distress. For someone looking from the outside, it can feel as though the person they once knew has disappeared behind the symptoms of the illness. Yet, it’s crucial to remember that mental health problems are hostile, irritating, and draining, but the people suffering from them are not. This is the key distinction that needs to be kept in mind when we are trying our best to support them.

Depression, for instance, can leave someone feeling isolated. They can appear disengaged, distant, or irritable. Yet, this isn’t the person themselves – it's the depression taking over, casting a fog over their ability to connect or respond as they once did. Anxiety can cause someone to appear irrational, constantly worrying about scenarios that seem ridiculous to others. Again, this is the anxiety talking, not the person who, beneath it, longs for relief from the torture of anxiety. Similarly, with OCD, people become fixated on rituals or intrusive thoughts, leading to behaviours that appear incomprehensible and irritating to others. But the compulsions are not the person’s true self; they are symptoms of the disorder. When someone you love is experiencing mental health issues, it is like they are wearing a mask. The person underneath is still there, but the mask hides their true identity.

Standing on the Same Side

The metaphor of standing on the same side of the boxing ring as the person suffering is useful in understanding how we can help. Instead of seeing the person as the problem, we need to tackle the mental health issue together, not allow it to divide us.

In the case of depression, for example, rather than viewing someone’s lethargy or lack of interest as a personal failing, understand that this is the depression’s grip. By offering compassion and understanding, we help fight the battle against it, encouraging the person to behave against how their depression makes them feel; keeping hope for them when depression is sucking it from them.

Similarly, for anxiety, instead of becoming frustrated with someone’s fears or need for reassurance, stand beside them and help challenge their catastrophic thinking, encouraging them to feel the fear and do it anyway. When it comes to OCD, recognising that compulsions stem from a mental health issue, allows you to approach the person with empathy, rather than judgment, whilst pushing against their OCD.

See the Person Beneath their Illness

We understand that dementia changes a person fundamentally, often making them unrecognisable. Mental health problems, too, can create a similar experience, but with one important difference: beneath the illness, the person you love is still there and can get better. This is why it’s so important to separate the person from their condition.

It can be exhausting to live alongside someone suffering from mental health issues. Mental illnesses are exhausting and draining forces. But the person themselves, the individual behind the depression, anxiety, eating disorder or OCD, is still there, even if they seem temporarily buried beneath the weight of their illness.

Conclusion

In helping someone with a mental health problem, always try to separate the person from their problem. This distinction is vital for providing effective support and maintaining a healthy relationship. Mental health conditions can make those you care about seem unfamiliar at times - but remember that these issues are not the person—they are just symptoms of the problem that they are battling. By standing on the same side of the fight, you can offer the compassion, patience and encouragement that they need to find their way back to being themselves.

Finally, always ensure that you are listening to the person and not to the illness. By listening to the illness – letting a person with OCD shower for longer, a person with agoraphobia stay permanently indoors, a person with an eating disorder not eat, a person with depression not move – we are colluding with the mental health problem and allowing it to take further hold.