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Sky News
Sky News Interview Transcript
Health officials are calling for better methods of prevention and treatment for those
battling mental health issues. Today is World Mental Health Day.
One out of every five Australians will experience some form of mental illness each year,
and nearly one in ten Australians will experience some type of anxiety disorder.
Australia still records low treatment rates with the latest data indicating that only 35
per cent of people with a mental illness are in care.
World Mental Health Day is aimed at lifting the stigma on mental illness and encouraging
the public to support those whose lives are impacted.
Joining us now in the studio is Meiron Lees, the author of the book entitled D-Stress,
Building Resilience in Challenging Times.
Tell us why we’re not more resilient. Is that a growing problem in our community?
It certainly is, I think stress, anxiety and depression are on the increase specifically in
our contemporary culture, and I think the main reason why we’re not resilient is
because we haven’t been taught how to become resilient. The school system is fantastic
but what it doesn’t do is teach us an essential life skill, and that is how to think.
We are not taught how to view the stressful situations we have in an optimistic way.
Some people might say this is just navel gazing, everyone’s in charge of their own destiny.
What would you say to that?
If you look at what stresses us out, and people feel stressed about different aspects of their lives,
often our external world controls our internal world. For example, if we’re
having a stressful day, it’s normally what happens to us, not what we’ve particularly done
ourselves. So we become victims to our external circumstances. Resilience is about how
we internally control our emotions, so that we can feel in control of our stress on a daily basis.
Is it also true that gradually, you’re taking more and more on board but you’re not actually
realising it? That you feel fine, but you might actually be soaking more stress in than you need to be?
Absolutely, and normally our bodies tell us what’s going on. Our bodies are the objective experience
of our thoughts. So if our body’s tensing up and we’re feeling tired,
we’re not sleeping well, that’s an indication there’s probably some mental stress going on.
But it’s not about denying that the stress is there, or the effects on our body because physiologically
some of those responses in our own body are actually useful for our own general
health in dealing with stressful situations.
Our body is a really good guide to let us know how we are going. Most importantly we need to appreciate the
connection between our psychology and our physiology. When we are feeling
stressed our body feels it too.
Meiron, you’ve said that you need to make your mind, your best friend. Easier said than done?
I think it’s possible. What’s so important is for us to make our minds our best friend by viewing
our situations in a positive and optimistic way. For example, if we are stressing about
something, let’s rather look at the benefits and opportunities that can come from that particular
stressful situation. Rather than allowing that stressful situation to control us. So
making our mind our best friend is really to try to control that negative churn. We have about 60,000 thoughts
churning through our mind everyday, and most of those are negative. So our
challenge is to try and control and manage those thoughts.
What about a really sudden and disastrous thing where there is nothing good about it. For instance, the death
of a loved one, or more recently the earthquake and tsunami devastation in our
region. How do you think positively or well about that?
I think what’s important is to recognise our feelings and not to wish something away, for example if
it’s a death and a tragedy of course, we need to mourn it, we need to
recognise the pain
and heal it. In time we can start feeling better about it. The situation is normally affecting us already
emotionally, what’s important, is to recognise how we are going to look
at that, and
of course when it comes to that kind of thing like a tsunami it’s a very, very difficult situation,
you can’t tell someone that’s just lost a loved one to go and
think positively. It’s
important to own our own emotions as well and go through the healing process.
You have talked about transforming your Thought Attacks™, can you explain a little bit about that?
A Thought Attack™ is when the mind turns on itself and attacks the possibility of a positive outcome for us.
It’s those negative thoughts that are churning. What’s
really important to manage
that is to look at how else you can view a stressful situation differently, and it’s all in the
interpretation. So how we interpret the events that are happening to us will
determine the way that we are feeling.
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