Just for a bit of a laugh – you know just how wacky us clinical depressives really are – I decided to complete the AXA Mind Health Self-Check which I found on the Liverpool FC website. Before I go into the results, which represent a masterclass in brevity to say the least, let me clear that I am not trying to belittle the idea, nor the efforts of AXA and Liverpool FC in addressing mental health. However, I question the timing which Liverpool’s website says is “to mark Blue Monday“, a totally made-up marketing device invented by a now defunct company that sold holidays. I write about that here. Anyway. let’s look at the results of the Eclectic Blue jury:
* STRUGGLING*
I’m not going to argue with that because, just for a change, I am. But what can I do about it?
Helpfully, AXA sets out the options by providing a list of countries. I clicked on the UK section and here’s what it said:
United Kingdom
In an emergency, call 999
Get help from 111 online or call 111 and select the mental health option
Samaritans on 116123
Text “SHOUT” on 85258 or online @shout.org for text-based confidential support.
And that, as they say, was all she wrote. It was certainly all I needed to read, that’s for sure. For ‘Struggling’ read ‘Suicidal’, but happily – is that the right word? – I am definitely struggling but I am not suicidal, at least not this week. For those of you still with me after over a decade of self-pitying woe-is-me whingeing about my mental health, this follows a common theme. For most of us who straddle the gap between a minor mental health incident and the need to be sectioned, there lies nothing.
To give credit where credit is due, the two experts at LFC, physical performance coach Jordan Fairclough and performance psychologist Lee Richardson, along with first team star Cody Gakpo, have made a very useful video, which I would urge everyone, those who are mental and those who are not (yet?), to watch. The worst I can say is that it’s better than nothing. The best I can say is that it may change or even save someone’s life. But in more general terms, will it make a difference?
Of course not. It’s at the very least a gesture by AXA, a large French insurance corporation and Liverpool FC, a football club owned by FSG, an American multinational sports holding conglomerate. I’d like to think that the motive of both parties was sincere, the alleviation of suffering for those with poor mental health.
In truth, nothing will change unless politicians take mental health seriously. The rest of us can whinge and whine all we like, why even the royal family can campaign as part of the Heads Together organisation, but it’s all about the money, money, money. And the will to spend it.
Thanks to AXA, I know that I am struggling. Thanks to AXA, I know what to do: call 999 or the Samaritans. That’s today, tomorrow is another day and from then on we can forget all about mental health. And of course Blue Monday will be behind us, too.
