By Jasmine Elliot

Moving. From lectures to tutes to study to home to work. From ward rounds to volunteering to that friend’s 21st party to spending time with family. We’re ticking off our to-do lists, reaching deadlines and staring at our rainbow google calendars.

If you’re like me, you feel anxious or guilty when you’re not working towards something, with busyness an undying static sound in the background of life. It sounds counterintuitive but being busy has always been a bit of a coping mechanism, with the hope that if I stayed busy enough, the rest of my life couldn’t catch up with me.

Some of us feel a little like sharks, with motion filling our ‘gills’ with oxygen and standing still associated with a feeling of asphyxiation.

Somewhere in a downward spiral of procrastination, I did some research on shark physiology…

Fun fact #1: Not all sharks have to move to keep breathing, in fact, only 12 in 400 species do. The oldest sharks breathe by ‘buccal pumping,’ and spend time resting at the bottom of the ocean- some do both this and ‘ram ventilation’ (the type of breathing that requires motion).

Fun fact #2: We aren’t sharks. We don’t have gills, don’t breathe underwater and while our attention may be drawn to swimming dogs, we probably don’t want to eat them.

Sharks aside.

Some of us thrive by being busy, it gives us a target to shoot our metaphorical arrows at… but sometimes there are too many targets, our arms get sore and our arrows start splintering. We’re still hitting the targets, but not getting the bullseyes. From a practical standpoint, we’re not doing as well. From a more personal one, we become unwell.

Burn out is something we hear so often about, but often don’t consider properly; we know that ‘burnout is a symptom of burnout,’ but what does it actually look like past a mark in HEP on a preclin exam? It’s when I’ve measured my life by a paralysing never-ending list of tasks, paying no attention to my own mental or physical health which inevitably deteriorated. The list of tasks lost meaning – I was chronically stressed and at the end of year 12 I had nothing left to give to myself or others.

But it wasn’t study that pushed me to this point, it was my voluntary busyness. I recently read a report that people don’t enjoy spending time alone in a room with nothing to do but think. Many would rather do something than nothing – even if that something is nothing. These people opted to receive an electric shock during this time alone – an electric shock which they would pay $5 to avoid. I’m not saying getting involved and having a full life is that same as choosing an electric shock. But I was at the point where I knew that my overcommitment was detrimental, yet I kept pressing that electric shock button.

As medical students now and as medical professionals tomorrow, we’re undoubtedly busy people. But I think this notion of “crazy busy” is a cult that is so difficult to escape from. We’re defining ourselves by what we do and not how we’re doing. We answer ‘busy’ to ‘how are you?’ as if this gives some reflection to our internal being.

In a world where everything is moving, stopping for a moment might feel synonymous with not breathing but unscheduled time isn’t meaningless, nor does back-to-back scheduling enrich ourselves.

Idleness gives us the opportunity to check in with ourselves; to reconnect with our targets, replenish our arrows and restring our bows. This article is probably one of many tabs you have open right now. I would encourage you, at some point, to close all of these and take a minute or two to stop and breathe. Bake something, go for a run, mindlessly float around the internet. It’s time we applauded people for looking after themselves rather than wearing busyness as a badge of honour… because we aren’t sharks.

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body and deprived of it, we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.

-Tim Kreider

 

 

By Natasha Rasaratnam 

I was lucky. I was lucky that my grandparents left Sri Lanka to seek a better, more hopeful future for their children. I was lucky that I did not have to grow up in a war-torn country whose scars are only beginning to heal. Yet for those who lived through the 25-year civil war, the trauma is everlasting, hiding under the facade of a country that wants to forget the legacy of its conflicts. It is no surprise that after these decades of violence, mental health issues have risen dramatically in Sri Lanka. Yet this spike has not been adequately met with appropriate treatment and education. At its core, this crisis is underpinned by an entrenched cultural stigma towards mental health conditions.

Stigma is when there is a negative perception of someone based soley on them experiencing a mental health issue. More often than not, stigmas aren’t born from malicious intent rather due to a lack of understanding yet nonetheless they create a barrier for people to seek help. In Sri Lanka, it can sometimes be thought that having a mental illness or being associated with someone who does, negatively affects your employment and marital opportunities. This is exacerbated by a lack of mental health workers and information that is not readily available to the public. As a result, particularly in rural areas, it is more common to take people to faith healers or temples rather than seeking professional help. There are also cultural associations that link these illnesses with the notion of ‘karma’ and resulting in them being considered as fate with blame being laid on the person themselves. There are also some views that mental illness simply doesn’t exist and people “just need to get on with it”. This dismissive perception associated with mental illness is deep-rooted and spreads beyond South Asia to immigrant communities worldwide.

Closer to home, despite all the ‘R U OK days’ and mental health awareness events, there are still communities in Australia in which mental health is a stigma. Although we’ve made vast improvement to tackling the stigma surrounding mental health conditions, we must not be complacent in thinking we have completely solved the problem.

Growing up in a migrant community has its ups and downs. Everyone is friendly and wants to know about you… maybe too much at times. Coming from a Sri Lankan background, it is not unusual to hear older members of the community dismiss depression as a weakness of character and not a valid health condition. Similarly, suicide is often mentioned in hushed tones, more a source of shame rather than the tragedy it is. Of course, these attitudes cannot be generalised to all members of the community and I am lucky to be surrounded by a family that understands and values the importance of mental wellbeing.

Yet the consequence of this underlying stigma can have devastating effects on those already isolated due to their mental health. A friend was told to “just pray it away” by family members as a cure for her severe depression. Although faith can be a healing force, the dismissiveness of these comments resulted in a toxic environment at home of further isolation and distrust. Mental health stigmas not only stop people from speaking out about their health but can also worsen the situation perpetuating a vicious cycle.

These perceptions are so ingrained in the older generations of migrant communities it’s difficult to weed them out. Unlike Sri Lanka, Australia has the resources and educational tools to reform and erode taboos such as these. However, despite their admirable aims events run by organisations such as Beyond Blue and Headspace can have little reach to address older members of the community.

To an extent this is also a generational problem rather than a cultural one. Hence, it falls upon us as the next generation to strive to engage in a conversation with our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles about mental health.  For all their flaws, migrant communities are tight knit, and it is this support which can be utilised to help those struggling the most rather than demonising them. Cultural leaders have the power to make change and it is only through our conversations with them that we can start to see this stigma being overcome. We’re the lucky ones – we have resources and information at our fingertips. Our communities’ ignorance can no longer be an excuse.