Swine flu is well and truly upon us. My local pharmacy’s window display is devoted to protecting yourself from the latest plague to obsess our self-diagnosing hysterical selves. Everything from disposable masks and effervescent vitamin C and zinc infusion, to the alcohol rubs we are currently advised to all but swallow following a short trip on public transport. There are websites devoted to self-diagnosis, countless articles written in the alarmist press concerning the outrageous possibility of non-medical staff issuing a diagnosis at the end of a phone line, which, apparently is potentially catastrophic when compared to our own self-diagnosis at the end of your fibre-optic internet cable (engage your brain cells please Daily Mail). We’re told that the hundreds will slip into thousands by the autumn and millions of lost hours taken off sick will cost the country billions. Full-page newspaper adverts listing symptoms and sharp sideways looks in the train carriages should anyone sneeze are now the norm.

 

The hysteria reminds me of the mid-80s Aids panic. The countless leaflets, shock-tactic TV advertising ‘DON’T DIE OF IGNORANCE’, washing the plate three times or simply throwing it in the bin if you’d invited a homosexual to tea, over-cautious tourists moving train carriages if they spotted a gay couple looking moderately thin hopping aboard. Over time, the education surrounding HIV/Aids has either improved or just been forgotten and there’s a genuine belief that providing you’re not shopping for Kylie CDs every second Tuesday, or African, then you are largely unaffected. Of course, the difference with the piggy-snuffles (or rather, H1N1), is that it doesn’t discriminate by community or continent. It just might get us all – and while a rub of the alcohol gel between the fingers might settle your mind for a moment, if you’ve been air-kissing an infected carrier, albeit an asymptomatic one, well, you just might die. I warned you these articles were alarmist.

 

For all you Daily Mail-reading medical amateur professionals with an internet connection, let us engage in a little statistical analysis. At the time of writing there are approximately 105,000 people living in the UK with HIV (1) This is approximately 0.15 per cent of the national population. By the end of July in the UK, almost 4,500 people are thought to have contracted swine flu (2) a disappointingly less-than-scandalous 0.006 per cent of the population. Based upon the panic that has greeted both of these international pandemics, how then have we let it slip through conscientious nets that in the UK ten per cent (that’s one in ten, folks) of children and young people are thought to have mental-health problems so severe that they require the care of a medical professional (3) While HIV is thought to affect up to five per cent of gay men in this country (4) that figure doubles in relation to the mental health and wellbeing of the most young and vulnerable in our wider society.

So why then are we not hysterically window dressing our pharmaceutical emporiums with advertisements for anxiety counselling and St John’s Wort? Well, the cynical among us might argue that the drug companies are founded upon massive profits from the sales of cold and flu medication. And even though there is no cure for a virus, whether it be HIV or H1N1, we can instil enough fear into the healthy minds of our population to spunk half their salary on vitamin supplements and a range of paracetamol-based symptom-suppressors that might keep the wolf from the door. Somewhat more confusing is our comfortable use of the terminology around mental health in our everyday colloquialism. Be honest – even if you’ve never actually said it, how often have you thought someone to be loopy, crazy, mental, potty, barmy, ga-ga, kooky, or just a complete fucking psycho?

 

Our mainframe popular music divas have built their careers on it; how ironic was the public collapse of Britney only to be accompanied by her own soundtrack of “I’m crazy! I just can’t sleep; I’m so excited I’m in too deep!”. How we scream for more at Beyoncé headbanging her way across the O2, and indeed the world, howling “ Got me lookin’ so crazy right now, Your love’s got me lookin’ so crazy right now, Got me lookin’ so crazy right now your touch’s got me lookin’ so crazy right now! Lookin’ so crazy your love’s got me lookin’ got me lookin so crazy in love!” I think it’s safe to say she’s fucking crazy, man.

 

Other medical complaints just don’t cut it in the studio; imagine Madonna’s early Grammy-nominated performance had she not been so crazy, but a little hot around the gills and wheezing: “I’ve got the swine flu! Touch me once and you’ll catch it too; I never wanted to be sick like this, it’s all brand new, you’ll catch it from my kiss, you’ll catch it from my kiss because I’ve got the swine flu....” The message is clear – whether it’s Patsy Cline’s Crazy or Dinah Washington letting us know that she’s Mad About The Boy, mental health doesn’t so much as infect our psyche as permeate our popular culture. And we’re fine with it.

 

But in all seriousness, why is there such a lack of seriousness on our part to acknowledge that at some time or another in our lives we are all likely to experience mental-health issues of varying degrees 3. How many of us have felt glum, how many suffered depression, how many anxiety, how many claustrophobia, agoraphobia, how many despair, grief, confusion, loneliness… and yet how many of us truly look closer to home at the mental-health issues that do affect us all. So the next time we’re bandying on about our crazy talk, or engaging our minds in the pursuit of online medical support, just spare a thought for those whose mind might be the very source of their despair. Face-masks and multi-vits won’t help you.

 

“And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad

The dreams in which I’m dying, Are the best I’ve ever had

I find it hard to tell you and I find it hard to take

When people run in circles it’s a very, very

Mad world”

 

(1) www.avert.org/uk-statistics.htm (accessed 3.8.09)

(2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8121292.stm (accessed 3.8.09)

(3) www.channel4.com/health/microsites/09/4health/mind/ mhi_facts.htm

(4) Positive Nation, issue 142 - www.positivenation.co.uk

 

• (You Drive Me) Crazy; performed by Britney Spears; songwriters: Elofsson, Jorgen; Magnusson, Per; Sandberg, Martin; Kreuger, David

• Crazy In Love; performed by Beyoncé Knowles; songwriters: Beyoncé Knowles, Rich Harrison, Shawn Carter, Eugene Record

• Crazy For You; performed by Madonna; songwriters: John Bettis (lyricist) Jon Lind (composer)

• Mad World; performed by Tears For Fears; songwriter; Roland Orzabal