I suppose that I think about mental health a bit more than most people. Perhaps it is because my mother had bipolar disorder. Before I was even twenty one years old I began a long journey of helping to keep her mental state as stable as possible. It was more than a part time effort that required my vigilance and patience for over forty years.

During that same time I was a teacher of adolescents and young adults some of whom suffered from a variety of mental health issues as well. I saw depression up close and personally on many occasions and learned how to read the signs that someone was in trouble. I realized that mental disorders can happen to anyone even in the most caring and loving families. I have in many ways mastered a keen ability to know when someone is struggling with even when they are quite adept at masking their symptoms. I have seen the kind of triggers that sometimes take people down a kind of rabbit hole of darkness from which they struggle to emerge. 

Isolation and loneliness are enemies of our good mental health as surely as smoking is bad for our hearts and and lungs. Sadly, many of the tools that make life more interesting and hopeful also have the power of bringing a kind of darkness into some people’s lives. In particular, because of the pandemic people all over the world suddenly found themselves spending more and more time interacting remotely with the world around them. They often sat for days and weeks on end in their rooms, rarely meeting up with people outside of their homes. Social media became an outlet for belonging that all too often ended up only increasing the anxieties that people were feeling. In many ways the situation impacted young people the most as a long swath of their development was spent without the normal interactions and collaborations that are a key aspect of growing up. 

Now we have unprecedented numbers of our young people suffering from all kinds of mental disorders that sometimes sadly lead to self harm or even suicide. Social media while playing a key role in helping them to feel connected to others has also had the negative effect of making them feel even more alone and dispirited. There are far too many young people still tethered to a remote lifestyle that is sucking the life out of them. Often they do not even realize just how dark and lost they have become from making themselves prisoners inside a digital world devoid of human contact. They do not know how to fully return to life outside of the four walls of their homes.

I always knew that my mother was in trouble mentally whenever she drew the blinds and curtains in her home, quit answering the phone, and sat by herself dwelling on obsessive thoughts that made her unable to function or even sleep at night. While she had a real disease that created chemical changes in her brain, the illness was exaggerated by her isolation. Without reduced human contact her mind ran wild and made her sicker and sicker with each passing hour. On those occasions my brothers and I had to forcefully intervene to get her to a doctor for help. We also had to make sure that she regularly got out of the confines of her home to interact with other people. We had to bring the sunshine to her lest she dive so deeply into her depression that there would be no coming back to reality. 

I constantly see signs of people who have not yet been able to fully return to normal after the worldwide pandemic. They spend most of their days alone. With each passing day they have become more and more adverse to venturing out into public spaces. Many such persons are youngsters who attend school but spend most of the rest of their time in their rooms using computers as their recreational outlet. They become lost in a world of games and social media. They are like the aimless guy in the basement who has no goals or prospects. Their minds begin to play tricks on them, to turn on them. 

The Surgeon General of the United States has come forward with a dire warning that the mental health of our youth is endangered by the unchecked, unmonitored and continual use of social media. I suspect that more than anything many of our youth are caught in a web of loneliness, confusion and anger that they do not even understand. Instead of being physically active, interacting with others and seeing reality through an unfiltered and unbiased lens, they are feeling alienated from a normal existence. They witness the divisions and wars and rancor and distrust everyone. The cocktail of cynicism and hopelessness becomes their addictive brew. 

I know many adults who have realized that much of social media is an endless loop of fantasy or anger and in self defense they have taken a break from it and may never return. Perhaps we would all do well to temper our addiction to checking to see if anyone has responded positively to our posts or tweets or comments online. Many are abandoning the chatter of sound and fury for walks outside, opportunities to help others, meaningful work to be done. They are seeking real people that do not drain their emotions. 

If there is anything that we really need to make great again it is the lovely habit of embracing one another with joy and love. We should all be pushing ourselves out of our rooms, out of the darkness and into the sunshine that has always been waiting for us. If we know someone who has been reticent to get fully back into life, we would do well to invite that person to come along with us. If a wounded soul need help doing so, then we should be happy to help them. There is life beyond Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X. Go out and live it.