Monetisation of Mental Health and Self Care Culture

TW: discussions about poor mental health and diet culture

Hello, welcome back! Hope you have had a good week so far. 

Today we will be discussing the monetisation of mental health. 

"Monetisation- Monetization or monetisation is, broadly speaking, the process of converting something into money. The term has a broad range of uses. In banking, the term refers to the process of converting or establishing something into legal tender." -Wikipedia.

The concept of monetisation of mental health was first introduced to me by this article- https://impactnottingham.com/2019/10/monetising-mental-health/. I had to do some research before properly understanding it because to be honest it is confusing and a larger problem than I thought. So today, I will be talking about my experience and opinion of this subject.

How I understand this statement is: people profiting of others low mood or mental state. There are many ways this can occur but mainly we see this through 'self care' culture.

When you think of self care, we are often presented with thoughts of baths and face masks and candles and relaxing which is how I usually take care of myself when feeling a bit crap. But I think the self care discourse ignores that sometimes looking after yourself and your mental health does involve doing things that aren't fun and enjoyable. 

I believe that the self care discussion is often centred around buying and getting things in your life to 'make things better'. While sometimes buying that bubble bath might give you momentary happiness, it also may just be a purchase you are making to ignore what is actually going on in your life and how your mental health is deteriorating.

This idea of purchasing or having certain things to make everything better is inherently damaging and dangerous. Now, I speak from experience because I am guilty of this too: constantly buying new things or creating other things to do rather than addressing why I needed to do be doing this self care or improvement of myself. It's a scary mindset to be in because you rely on material things or experiences to fuel you, which isn't neccessarily bad all the time but to rely on it for everything is  dangerous. It can bog you down, not only mentally but financially, physically and emotionally.  Looking after yourself shouldn't mean you rely on material things or other people to bring you happiness. True healing comes when you look at yourself from within and assess what is wrong. 

The monetisation comes into this when businesses are able to make money from people's bad days. This can be seen in the diet and food industry where 'looking after yourself' translates to 'be skinny or else'. The conversation about 'Self Care' and wellbeing has been taken over by Instagram influencers who use these insecurities and low moods to flog you their book called 'Be Happy' or sell you a lovely bath range which will 'improve your low moods'. In reality, this cannot solve anything. The marketing and business industries will take anything which weakens you and use it to make you buy stuff which you realistically don't need. And sure, sometimes it's really nice to buy some new makeup or new bath bombs but we now focus on the 'solution' or the 'cure' to looking after ourselves, like Jess Vernon talks about in the article from earlier, when really the key to looking after ourselves is actually right here already. 

This monetisation of mental health doesn't leave room for the conversations we so desparately need to have. We need to be able to talk about mental health without the focus on changing or re- inventing ourselves, but rather working on what we already have.  Society is all about new and exciting things with the constant ads and promotions around you 24/7, when really, I believe, the focus should move to us. The old less shiny thing. 

I wish, as a society, we could spend time teaching others that we need to take care of ourselves and this is achieved by looking inside, getting help, and wanting to get better. We can put these ideas into practice by realising that self care and looking after yourself sometimes means you have to do things which you don't want to but will help you in the long run. This will in turn help to improve our mental states and allow us to stay in tune with our brains and bodies. Look after yourself and do what is right for you, not what other people say is right. 

Again, I am writing this from my own opinion and what I think may be completely different to what you think. 

So, if you want to talk please message me on my instagram @leah_nott or leave a comment below so we can carry on this important discussion. 

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a blessed week, see you next Wednesday!

Leah xxxx

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