We are different: A perspective on mental health and our diversity

design: Team Nebula

To understand different angle of mental health first we have to know what mental health is. So, what is it? It is a state of mental wellbeing that enable us to cope with the stresses of life, realize or abilities, learn and work well, and contribute to our society. It is more than a mental disorder, which is so unique for person to person. It is so different from person to person that even if five people are observing the same situation with us. Five of them could have totally different understanding of the situation. Because we human absorb thing differently based on our experience. Regarding this a famous experiment known as Watsons ‘little Albert ‘experiment could be an example.¹ 

Where a little child name albert was subjected to experiment. First, they put some little animal in front him to see if he was afraid. Surprisingly he wasn’t afraid of those animals rather he tried to play with them. The second time they put the animal while making a loud noise on the background which made him cry. After repeating the pattern for 7 times whenever the animal ran in front of him little albert would be afraid even make any noise. This experiment was a legendary experiment that proved our emotional responses could be shaped by environment rather than solely innate. If this little change can change our aspect of a situation. Imagine what differences geographical and cultural diversity would make in our mental health. Human, in this world has different culture, different geographical environment, different way of surviving so as a result Our mental health has lots of diversity based on where our ancestors have been residing for long long time.

Culture is a holistic combination of ingrained and widely hold values and practices that foster unity within a group. Its shaped by us based on our relationship with or surrounding .it is an everchanging process. It varies from place to place based on our geographical location. If we approach mental health with these elements many topics comes to the discussion, such as evolution, environment, history, religion, globalization etc. To begin with evolution, it is a result of changes in our genetic material or population over time on earth.²    Brain is a complex system of adaption created by neural selection.³   Also studies suggest a higher degree of risk of heritable risk such as 90% of trait variation for autism can be accounted for with genetics; bipolar disorder, 85%; schizophrenia, 81%; unipolar depression etc. So, it can be said that evolution impact mental health in a bigger scale as genetics plays a big role in mental health. For example, fight or flight response, which is an adaptive mechanism of our body. It is a response adapted by human to survive critical situation.⁴ 

Also, a similar theory for depression, according to analytical rumination hypothesis, depression is an energy preserving mechanism and this state helps us to focus on complex social or survival related problems. Of course, it varies from generation to generation, race to race as our way of facing critical situations also varies. Let’s say your ancestors come from a very strong communicative bond. And my ancestor survived in a remote place. Definitely two of our survival instincts would be different as their way of life, habit as adaptive mechanism is intrigued to our DNA. To understand this there is an everyday example, Fear of certain stimuli, such as snakes, heights, and spiders, evolved to protect early humans from dangers. These evolved fears are still present in us in modern times, even when the threat is no longer relevant. So, the next time you scream at a spider, just remember it's not you, it's your ancestors’ instincts kicking in... they just didn’t know that we now have bug spray!

Now things come to geography which take part to mold some characteristic of our nature based on weather, available food, society, pollution, danger etc. Although geographical determents of psychology are not well explored yet, things like weather, pollution landscape has some studies on them. Climate has a huge impact on our mental health.⁵   People coming from rough climate often shows anxiety, ptsd and chronic stress due to uncertainty of safety. Although their survival instinct is better than people living in more stable area. Also, they have strong social ties due to isolation and dependency of social cooperation. Costal people often show this traits.in case of plain land people is more agriculture oriented so their main stressor point would be agricultural failure, social problems more than any natural calamities.⁶ 

Even during covid lockdown there was an experimental observation on mental health effect on different space such as green space, inland blue space, coastal blue space. Interestingly green space showed significant buffering of negative effect of long lock down on mental health wile blue space didn’t show any significant result. So, despite having the same mental health issue background of the issue from both regions is different and it should be dealt differently.⁷   Similarly individual from sunny areas have higher rate of fast recover than one from area where sun light is low. So, as a result a person from far Europe and person from Asian country can have a mental issue which is defined by same name but their aspect would be different.⁸   Pollution can trigger our mental health and behavior.No wonder we city folks having rollercoaster mood- turns out we’re just breathing in bad vibes with the smog!

After all that History religion, rituals, race also have a big impact on mental health differences between us homo sapiens.^9 10  Big historical event such as war, epidemics affect our psychology on a bigger scale, as result many generations suffer from ptsd ,depression, anxiety and several mental issue. Even in modern time many that suffered from war and epidemics shows sign of generational trauma. with this come religion races which set major difference in our psychology.¹¹   Religious people often tend to deal situation differently than atheist this again differ between different religion. religious belief often provides a sense of meaning purpose and path to life. Also, it serves a coping strategy to stress, depression, grief through prayer.so while dealing with mental health issue professional always make sure to understand subject religious beliefs. As it servs as roots of our all beliefs and understanding of life. Lastly race is an unignorable topic in term of mental health. A behavior that is normal for one country is weird for another. For example, individual from Arab, South Asian, Latin American etc. are often express emotion with high energy and their culture is also loudly festive oriented. While some other nationality such as Nordic countries, East Asian, Central European are rather calm, quit and reserved.so definitely if a high energetic person become quit suddenly and vice versa it is a sign of some mental issues. Both of them will show signs differently for the same issue.

Now last but not the least, globalization affecting our mental health cannot be gone unspoked. Due to our fast globalization our culture, social norms, beliefs everything is getting mixed rapidly. Which has both Positive and negative impact. increase of connectivity and migration is amplifying our knowledge and freeing us from the generational feeling of isolation. But it also some time creates a loss of identity, many are losing their individuality. While economy is thriving it also bringing new unrealistic high standards together with stress, depression and a whole lot of mental issues. As a result, our diverse mental health is overlapping with each other. So, things like global stressor, and other terms are coming to the discussion as we are most globally sharing critical time as a result, shared sense of stress and anxiety are common.¹² 

Every element of this universe is unique with their own nature, so are we homo sapiens. Our evolving, culture, bringing up, survival, location religion, structure everything is unique. Every little difference in our life is making a little difference in our psychology, together all this difference overlaps, marge and create greater differences in our psychology as well as mental health. Similarly handling issues related to mental health are also different. None of our mental health mechanism are unnecessary although it may be overwhelming all of them are mechanism initiated by our brain for our survival throughout the evolution. Although it may be a little difficult, these diversities are part of und beautiful. They are what make us resilient to any situation, teach us to find life meaningful, understand each other, build strong community and grow our society.