Anyone engaged in the mental health sector knows that mental health has many more unknowns than knowns. So much of what is believed in Safety about mental health is myth.
Tackling mental health extends way beyond the idea of complexity, hence the need to recognise it as a wicked problem (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168851010003325 ). Just trying to understand the triggers of mental health (https://campushealth.unc.edu/health-topic/understanding-mental-health-triggers/) is beyond complex. So, any suggestion that mental health can be made easy and simple is dangerous and creates a culture of ignorance. Only those with no expertise in mental health would make such absurd claims about mental health.
The idea that psychosocial health and risk can be made simple (https://flourishdx.com/) is naïve and dangerous. Any use of such language should be avoided by safety people at all costs. The again, I guess it’s no different than getting a safetculture app and thinking one is tackling what culture is about. All such approaches should be avoided. In Safety if you want to know about mental health and culture apparently you ask a chemical engineer!
The last thing safety needs regarding mental health is marketing products, selling simplicity and devaluing education and experience in mental health.
Some of the most pronounced myths about mental health are tackled in the free book Everyday Social Resilience (see pp. 29-50). The early chapters focus on the myths of brain-centrism (that mental health is a brain problem), behaviourism and individualism.
Any approach to mental health that generates goop about brain strength and grit is complete nonsense. Any semiotics of superheroes (https://www.getgritprogram.com/) linked to mental health is nonsense and has no idea of the self, ethics and personhood.
This means of course you are mentally ill because you lack ‘grit’, whatever ‘grit’ is.
The worse thing about this stuff is it targets kids to cultivate binary thinking, full of blame and shame. Any nonsense about heroics and superheroes aimed at kids is simply naïve, dangerous and has no understanding of the psychology of child development. Amazing what ignorance in the psychology of child development (https://perpus.univpancasila.ac.id/repository/EBUPT191034.pdf) can do! But hey, that’s the Safety way (https://safetyrisk.net/best-fraud-in-safety-wins-this-is-the-way/).
So, what do we see from Safety? Stuff like this (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mark-glover-shp_thesafetysuperhero-innovation-activity-7204578743678320641-zX_J) aimed at kids. More indoctrination in unreality. More goop served up as safety. More compulsory mis-education by Safety with no expertise in education, psychology of childhood and learning.
What kids need more than ever is NOT the message of safety as super heroics (https://safetyrisk.net/no-gurus-no-stars-no-heroes-needed-in-safety/ )!
Safety is about the ordinary everyday process of tackling risk not the nonsense Safety goop pushed out into the vacant space of non-safety education (https://safetyrisk.net/why-would-you-want-to-be-a-safety-geek-or-hero/).
The more we think safety is about heroics, the more we think safety is not about us or daily work. The more we need heroes to save us the less we understand the everyday demands of tackling risk. We saw this stupidity with Hazardman (https://safetyrisk.net/hazardman-wont-save-you/). All of this is evidence that safety has no idea about the basics of risk and has no idea what to do. Nor, that kids under the age of 12 believe superheroes are real (https://psychscenehub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Piaget-Cognitive-Development-in-Children.pdf).
Could you think of a worse way to embed indoctrination in the minds of children about safety than books like this. Only Safety could be so ignorant of child development (https://niepid.nic.in/ELEMENTS%20OF%20CHILD%20DEVELOPMENT.pdf) than to put out and brag about such ideas. Of course, Safety doesn’t need any expertise in Education and Learning (https://developingchild.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Science_Early_Childhood_Development.pdf) to discuss education and learning.
But hold on to your hats, we now have the spirituality of GRIT in HOP (https://www.getthegrit.com/).
Now we have grit moving into HOP spirituality (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/phil-gilling_the-spirituality-of-hop-wellbeing-plays-activity-7204134654294048769-RK-w?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop). I’m sure we will see HOP explain their understanding of the non-material world of metaphysics and theology of spirit any day soon.
The next step for HOP is clearly the theology of ‘saving lives’ (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-people-dont-save-lives/ ). I can just see now all the tributes flowing out of HOP for the death of one of the worlds greatest theologians today (https://faith.yale.edu/media/in-memoriam-jurgen-moltmann-1926-2024). Fortunately, Moltmann wSet featured imageas not interested in fraudulence. I had the pleasure of a conversation with Moltmann in Melbourne on one of his visits and it is so refreshing to know that theologians don’t give a s&#t about safety.
I’m sure it won’t be long now until that book comes out from safety-not-so-differently science lab on spirituality (https://safetyrisk.net/the-theology-of-blame-from-safety-science/).
In this silly getting ‘grit’ stuff we see the projection that mental health is about wrong thinking, wrong emotions and a lack of courage indeed, that resilience is individual and the emotions are projected as a problem (https://safetyrisk.net/emotions-are-not-the-adversary/ ).
None of this is either true or real. All of these messages are myth.
Of course, ‘grit’ is either small particles of dirt or courage and resolve and what we get from most of this marketing is a method to make money that will make no difference in the lives of people suffering mental health. Indeed, simplistic approaches to mental health make everything worse.
Most of the messages about resilience floating about safety are spin and marketing, targeted to a poorly educated sector that wants to believe things are simple and easy.
- Resilience is not about grit.
- Resilience is not about rewiring the brain.
- Resilience is not about courage and determination.
- Resilience is not about ‘bouncing back’
- Resilience is not about ‘mental fitness’
- Resilience is not about a Hierarchy of Controls
- Resilience is not about fixing ‘hazards’
- Resilience is not about the nonsense of Resilience Engineering (only S2 could think up something so silly)
All of these messages and Discourse only fuel the binary distraction created by Safety that mental health and psychosocial risk are binary, simple and easy.
In this way Safety has to do nothing about the WHS curriculum or its Body of Knowledge in love with objects and zero. In this way it can be silent about what matters (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-culture-silences/) and noisy about petty pissy safety (https://safetyrisk.net/petty-pissy-zero-harm/).
In this way Zero can be made god (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/for-the-love-of-zero-free-download/) and the ideology of perfectionism (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/) can be maintained.
Aren’t you glad that Zero was front and centre (https://safetyrisk.net/the-global-zero-event-this-is-safety/; https://visionzero.global/vision-zero-takes-centre-stage-world-congress) at the global safety congress in 2023. I’m sure all the sponsors of Zero like the regulators, AIHS, Sentis, Forgeworks, ICAM were (https://safetyrisk.net/the-sponsors-of-zero-are/).
Any language of zero is anathema to anything to do with mental health.
The trouble with the ideology of zero is that any quest for perfection is a mental health disorder itself! Any denial of fallibility is a mental health disorder! (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-as-a-mental-health-disorder-obsession/)
If safety=zero then Safety itself is a mental health disorder!
So, how is an industry that promotes mental health disorders, delusion and obsessions (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-as-a-mental-health-disorder-obsession/; https://safetyrisk.net/dont-be-obsessed-with-safety/) going to possibly tackle the wicked problem of mental health?
If you want to understand Resilience as a Wicked Problem then the free book Everyday Social Resilience (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/everyday-social-resilience-being-in-risk/). is for free download. In this book there are no simple fixes, controls or solutions. However, in the book (pp. 84-95) you will also see a clear model, methodology and method that helps with tackling wicked problems. All of this is about practical, positive alternatives to the simplistic binary goop marketed by Safety.
In SPoR, there are positive, practical and mature approaches and methods to tackling risk that are neither simple or easy (https://safetyrisk.net/effective-strategies-in-mental-health-at-work/). Just because the task of tackling mental health is challenging doesn’t mean nothing can be done but rather a mature and wise approach seeks out methods that help and care and humanise others in their suffering.
The last thing Safety needs is nonsense indoctrination about superheroes or making mental health easy or simple. None of this is helpful, ethical or caring, which is why Safety never talks about care, ethics or helping. This is also why safety is not a profession.
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
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- Safety is an Art - December 7, 2024
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- How to Enable Unethical Practice in Safety - December 7, 2024
- Mapping an Ethic of Risk - December 6, 2024
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