Let’s talk (for real)
My name is Fanny and I’m a PhD researcher living with anxiety.
If you know me, or have been following me for a while, you probably know that I don’t shy away from speaking about mental illness and my experience with it. This is certainly not a coincidence since Instagram mental illness communities also happen to be at the center of my doctoral project. As part of my research, I study and am part of an inspiring community of artists, activists and overall normal people who actively speak about mental illnesses and who participate daily in making these disabilities more visible. This is why I can’t help but question myself every year when the bell lets talk day arrives and I wonder: where are all those people during the rest of the year? Why do we need a major company to tell us when to speak about mental illness? Is our life so caught-up in capital that we also need it to tell us when it’s okay to speak?
For me, bell talk is not actually an incentive to talk but it's rather a way to control how we talk about mental illness. It is way to make sure that it’s done within the margins of the acceptable and in line with a normative vision of mental health. In conversation with the wellness industry, bell talk is just another way to make profit of people’s need to feel “better" and the endless quest for happiness. This ultimately becomes dangerous because it means that our value as people living with mental illness is only seen when we act certain ways, purchase certain products or speak at particular moments.
Of course I am not criticizing the people who participate in the bell talk initiative. And I don’t deny the good it can do either. I actually think there is something transformative about sharing our stories online and finding people we can relate to. It’s also more than necessary to continue sharing helplines and other resources. What I want to denounce is the use of these stories to make profit and how bell is capitalizing on people’s experience of disability and their need to share their stories.
Mental health and the stigma around mental illness should be things that we take seriously every day of our lives. These conversations also shouldn’t be framed and limited to certain campaigns. So how can we share our stories in more ethical ways? How can we be seen and heard in all of our complexities? Those are ongoing questions in my mind but I would love to hear your thoughts.
