Thinking critically about R U OK DAY

Tomorrow is R U OK Day.

Once considered revolutionary and transgressive, talking about mental health and suicide is now increasingly the norm. When penne is penning your messages, you know that you have made it .

In fact, to some, the day has become dated and does more harm than good. Some people don’t want to be asked about personal matters from impersonal people.

Others would prefer to hear from a real professional, rather than an unqualified community member or colleague. 

This concern links to a broader criticism that R U OK Day distracts from the chronic underfunding of our mental health systems across Australia.

For some, R U OK Day resembles a marketing campaign that may as well carry the slogan So how the bloody hell are ya?

In many ways I connect with these criticisms of R U OK Day. Mental health systems have been underfunded and our inquiries into other’s wellbeing is indeed shallow and unhelpful at times.

However, I believe in rejecting R U OK Day, we may be losing things we want and gaining things we don’t.

What makes R U OK Day different from many other mental health related events is that it sharpens the focus on us, as individuals, workplaces and communities, to take an active interest in other’s wellbeing.

Rather than discharge our duties off to market-mechanisms that pay professionals to care for us (which has an important place), it invites us to re-connect to our communities and our sense of interdependence. We have a personal responsibility to care for one another.

We also have some abilities, too. Often who we can learn most from, are people with lived experience of distress.

Peer support work is an increasingly common approach to mental health care. These modes of care, which grew out of alternatives to the mental health system and a commitment to social justice, are built on working with, not doing things to, people in distress.

Active listening, enabling a person to find their own meaning in their situation, and supporting to make their own choices are common features of peer support.

Similar approaches, such as eCPR have been developed to support people in crisis. Their principles focus on Connecting with someone, emPowering them to make their own choices, and Revitalising a sense of purpose and direction to their own support.

Conversations that support our culture to grow in these directions are useful ones.

That we as a community need to step up to support one another does not provide permission for governments to step back.

Systems are woefully underfunded, with the least funding often going to alternative approaches such as peer support.

The things we do fund are focused less on a philosophy of R U OK, and more on a framework of diagnostic assessment. The risks of this focus on assessments are experiences of disempowerment and human rights breaches of those in care.

Governments can fulfil their bargain by changing how we prevent and respond to distress. The support for “Community Collectives” in Victoria, in addition to greater support for community-based mental health options is one example. Services led by those with lived experience is another.

Governments should also support family members and carers of people in distress. Though recognised in law, very little support has been provided to families lost in dysfunctional, harmful and dead-end systems.

More broadly, workplaces, public utilities and environments should be made more accessible to people with distress (or what’s termed psychosocial disabilities). Flexible work arrangements, such as the choices for late starts for people who use medication, is just one example. Complying with occupational health and safety obligations is another.

Holding the space for R U OK Days while demanding more from governments and workplaces is crucial.

It is not an either-or. Instead, it allows us to value and commit to care, without reducing it all to the care economy.