Really interested in this topic
Ever since the election in the UK I’ve been doing a lot of vox pop on the streets (Liverpool, Paris, Brighton) and listening to people around the question of what do you long for in the place where you live? I’ve been trying out different ways of leading people towards this question, either through asking about their dreamlife or asking them to imagine themeselves into a future they would like to live in. Through these talks it came up again and again that a lot of people really were living through enormously challenging situations and traumas and very willing to normalise it in conversation and shrug it off. Listening to people simply as humans without any judgements around what kind of state they were in (eg. seeing all the people I met simply as humans experiencing the world, rather than classifying some as experiencing states that were “abnormal” or could be classed as “mentally ill”) felt like a helpful thing - the urge to have one’s experience understood unites everyone. I was thinking about networks that could help this (and thinking around digital networks - Airbnb / dating apps etc. and looked at some mental health apps ) I was mostly thinking about place and the fact that it is true of all places that there would be really wretched experiences in need of processing and how this reality is something that needed stepping up to. I don’t know of many political utopias that really take into account neurodiversity and conditions like dementia.
This perspective is drawn from my experience of talking to a multitude of strangers these last few months and I realise there are many many issues when it comes to mental health. But I’ll share my naive view as I’ve been considering the role that I’d taken up in wandering about listening to whoever wanted or needed to talk and about the emotional healing of groups of people and how we so inadequately meet that in product driven cultures. The experience left me thinking that peer support was exactly what was needed by a lot of people. Psychologists are too expensive for most and online tick boxes are not at all like being listened to or sharing experience. There is something in spoken expression, being listened to and accepted that is just vital for emotional processing. With a few technologists I prototyped some systems that used voice recordings to play back these “real” expressions to others. Again the emphasis was not on mental illness but on the similarities and the differences in the longings of the inhabitants of particular locations - the project was inspired by thinking about how it might be possible to make networks in Nepal that in some way help the expression and social processing of the shock around the earthquake. However, there had been a depth in the experience of the interchanges that had happened whilst making the recordings that were more interesting than the voice playback system. The interviews always came out of a “live” sharing of experience (ie. the interviewee’s expeirences and my own) and involved risk, personal disclosure, agency and shared discovery in a way that listening to a recording does not. I am still wondering about digital systems that allow people to talk directly to each other in a structured way that could help them process their emotional situations. And I considered the various kinds of conversations people might want - just to speak or perhaps a more formal recorded conversation that involved making a commitment. Witnessed formal statements - like rituals - can create marker points in people’s lives. Alchoholic’s anonymous is probably a relevant example. I wondered about the Samaritans model which sets up this sense that you can make a telephone call if you are desperate and the “Samaritan” is steady, sane and absolutely OK. I wonder about a network that simply says: whatever you are going through is part of the human experience ie. there is no broken experience, but there certainly is incredibly challenging experience.
It feels like a given that two people who are in grief may find solace in sharing their real experience and connecting. And yet, to generalise, Western communities often put empahsis on usefulness in society and direct those exhibiting signs of mental distress to simply “be OK” / go on medication / fix themeselves - I totally agree with the point you are bringing out that “the community” is often woefully dysfunctional at supporting or accepting unusual emotional situations. I wonder about a network that links people as humans wanting to share something specific in a particular area of the world - so the region is the unifier, not the emotional suffering. Perhaps I’m thinking of a more generalised target audience than you are considering but my sense is after walking Liverpool, that everyone who lives in a distributed area is in someway involved in processing the emotions experienced in that place. I’m aware this is a poetic notion but I think various imaginative re-framings of the issue of mental health is what’s needed. Maybe this would only work as a three way conversation with someone trained and with really clear guidelines around use but my thinking here is that what’s needed is not this expert / patient relationship but two humans sharing different experiences of living in a similar place.
My friend Denis Ngala at TICAH, the Trust for Indigenous Culture and Health, an organisation in Kenya that works in linking health and cultural knowledge was telling me about the work that was being done in Kenya around victims of torture and reintegrating them back into society after they had given freedom again. The emphasis he was communicating was that recovery was not the problem of the victim of torture alone, but that it was the community’s task. They were working to educate the community around how to support the individual live beyond what they had lived through.
Real-life conversations from real experience in which neither party is an expert can be life changing. I work a lot with VR and seeing through another’s eyes is certainly helpful but what really leads to change is honestly communicating difficult experience and listening to others and accepting their experience. There’s some sort of validation in the honesty of that process that allows for shifts. There are lots of CBT, brain training, “look at things brighter” apps around but perhaps there’s room for bold digital networks - with some serious legal tick boxes in place - that make possible structured honest relational experiences between people in a particular place. It feels like using the digital to practice honestly speaking and speaking in one’s own name rather than anonymously would be helpful at this point. The histories of Snapchat et al. show the many superficial ways that communication can go, but there’s a saviness emerging around structuring and limiting online encounter and creating a precise invitation that makes me think it’s possible. Online experiences that move into relational and creative territory and away from the sense that mental difficulties have to be born alone like a scapegoat in the desert or solved once and for all like winning in a game - there’s something about the unique experience of another person that is a random element that can startle out of insularity. An app for conversation for people in a particular country? A way of marking personal commitments to the self and receiving some real social validation for it? A whole raft of comedy solutions that normalise being in dire straights and make it feel like it’s worth making the epic journey back to life? Not sure, but you’re right that there is a real need for help with processing emotions and it’s something that a healthy culture should be able to give.