Ireland is struggling with a mental health crisis, while we are flooded with fluffy, often pseudoscientific therapeutic advice via social media'I was 18 when I witnessed my grandmother spiral into the sort of madness most of us only ever interact with through fiction.' Image: Artis777/Agency Photos
My grandmother was sectioned and hospitalised for more than a year after decades of severe mental health problems which ultimately descended into psychosis As rigorous mental healthcare becomes more difficult to access and the public conversation on mental health becomes louder and vaguer, with more and more pathologisation of what seems like normal emotional responses to the inevitable stresses of life, our fixation on our emotional state only deepens. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this widespread sense of low wellbeing exists in the context of a social media-fuelled obsession with “wellness” as an industry.