Gratitude Day 15: Mental Health Awareness
Tue 15 September 2026
One thing I struggle with is seeing how much worse things are today than 30 years ago. Our capitalism is unhinged, rapacious, and vulgar. Our leaders are utterly clueless sociopaths. Our technology is manipulative and vapid. Injustice is reaching biblical levels.
But dang if mental health awareness isn't on fire. Now in terms of actual accessibility of professional mental health help, we're still in pretty bad shape here in the USA. But at least people are far more open to just talk about mental health, and that's really something.
In the past year, I've noticed that the two themes present in all of the TV shows I've been watching: death and mental health. I didn't go searching for it, I just kind of stumbled on them:
- The Good Place (2016): Death, Friendship, Mental Health, Personal growth
- Dead Like Me (2003): Death, Macabre humor, Friendship
- Ted Lasso (2020): Mental Health, Positivity, Personal Growth, Friendship
- Shrinking (2023): Mental Health, Loss, Personal Growth, Friendship
It's kind of amazing how these shows have dealt with issues that were very near and dear to me at the time. It's also very interesting how Ted Lasso began the same year that The Good Place ended (2020), and they do feel like they hand off the subject matter to a certain degree (and both handle it beautifully).
I'm super thankful for my fedifriend, Dave for recommending the latter two shows to me, as they've done a lot to lighten my mood and give me food for thought.
I especially love Harrison Ford's refrain (in Shrinking), challenging his protegé Jimmy to "do the work" of mental health, instead of running to various highs (whether drugs or just helping others as a fellow counselor) to avoid dealing with the source of his pain.
It's becoming increasingly rare, but I occasionally encounter people who have strongly negative reactions to the idea of seeking counseling or taking medicine like SSRIs.
I think some people make the assumption that just because it wasn't discussed in the past, it means that it wasn't an issue. That's obviously insane, and not how anything works. There's another assumption that because people didn't have the support of others' understanding of their mental health issues, it meant that they just "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" and got over it. There are certainly aspects of perspective, "faking it until you make it," and identity which are helpful in dealing with mental health issues, but it ignores the needless suffering of people who face mental health issues without support or avenues for increasing their understanding of it.
So, as I reach the mid-point of this month of gratitude, I am thankful that there are so many avenues for learning more about how to manage my own brain, and for my own friends and counseling experiences which have gotten me where I am.
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Category: Life
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