It is al­ways eas­i­er to help some­one who thinks that they are in need of help. That’s my open­ing sal­vo and a dis­claimer to pro­tect peo­ple from think­ing that it is al­ways pos­si­ble or easy to help some­one who is ex­hibit­ing signs of a men­tal malaise.

I want every­one to have a bet­ter mind, not just those ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties.

Every­one should work con­stant­ly on the up­keep of the mind as pre­ven­tive care for the day of un­ex­pect­ed trau­ma, or trig­gers that may im­pact us neg­a­tive­ly.

The ap­peal again, is for every­one to re­gard the brain as the or­gan that hous­es mind mat­ters and to con­sid­er that ef­forts we put in­to oth­er or­gans should be equal­ly or even high­er placed to­wards our mind.

More mind care is es­sen­tial and should be ahead of or on par with the phys­i­cal as­pects of our health.

I ad­vo­cate from the po­si­tion that the mind is a ter­ri­ble thing to lose. Ask your­self what is the use of an ex­cel­lent physique (or even your well-pay­ing job) if you do not have men­tal acu­ity.

But in­ter­ven­tions are nev­er straight­for­ward, nei­ther for our­selves nor those around us.

If some­one comes to you with, or if you ob­serve a per­son ex­hibit­ing melan­choly or a lack of good well-be­ing, gen­er­al­ly you are prompt­ed to help.

In my ex­pe­ri­ence, of­ten the per­son ex­hibit­ing the signs may not be the one to open the con­ver­sa­tion.

If they do, though, one should be ready to help. If they do not, then there ought to be some lev­el of in­formed in­ter­ven­tion to aid the per­son.

Be­ing in­formed is im­por­tant. It would be of lit­tle use if you looked at some­one ex­hibit­ing signs of men­tal dis­tress and start­ed off with (and I have heard this): “What’s wrong with you boy?” or “Get your act to­geth­er nuh girl” or some brash or inane com­ment that lacks in­for­ma­tion, com­pas­sion, and sen­si­tiv­i­ty.

Be bet­ter in­formed. We are of­ten too judge­men­tal and pre­scrip­tive in our ap­proach to peo­ple and their be­hav­iour, feel­ings or ac­tions if we con­clude it does not fit our “norm.”

I am camp­ing out on “in­formed in­ter­ven­tion.”

Be­cause we of­ten choose to re­main ig­no­rant of peo­ple’s cir­cum­stances and their right to dig­ni­ty, we have be­come a peo­ple who rush to judge­ment and pro­nounce words with­out care for the ex­pe­ri­ence of oth­ers, con­stant­ly be­ing se­vere­ly crit­i­cal, and pre­scrip­tive based on what we con­sid­er best.

Peo­ple are not un­afraid to be opin­ion­at­ed and con­demn­ing.

To be the op­po­site of that, sus­pend­ing judge­ment and ap­ply­ing rea­son to the sit­u­a­tion, is hard work. That re­quires see­ing oth­er peo­ple’s hu­man­i­ty and be­ing bet­ter in­formed as to why some­one is ex­hibit­ing a par­tic­u­lar be­hav­iour at a par­tic­u­lar time.

Let me harp on that is­sue of sus­pend­ing judge­ment a bit more with a per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence.

I am in a com­mu­ni­ty which pro­motes teach­ing, re­buk­ing, cor­rect­ing and train­ing in right­eous­ness, in help­ing peo­ple to align them­selves with the doc­trine of ref­er­ence.

Af­ter decades of self-ad­vo­cat­ing, in­tro­duc­ing men­tal health as a main­stream sub­ject to the space, teach­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly, and be­ing unashamed­ly open about what my own “suf­fer­ing” looks like if I am ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a break­down or anx­i­ety spi­ral, there is less than a hand­ful of peo­ple who ever re­call or re­spond with un­der­stand­ing in my mo­ment of de­cline.

What is eas­i­er for peo­ple is to be prej­u­diced and to judge with­out know­ing or con­sid­er­ing: “Is there a rea­son for that ac­tion or re­ac­tion?”

My ex­pe­ri­ence re­mains a path straight to con­demn­ing—judg­ing with­out know­ing, and un­think­ing­ly pro­nounc­ing strong dis­ap­proval.

That is usu­al­ly fol­lowed by a pre­scrip­tion as to how to cor­rect the be­hav­iour and/or os­traci­sa­tion, or a cool­ing off of re­la­tions.

That is such a nat­ur­al hu­man re­sponse and it re­mains the same in com­mu­ni­ties where we are com­mand­ed to love first.

My uni­ver­sal ex­pec­ta­tion of com­pas­sion has re­mained low.

My mind says em­pa­thy is hard work if you need to give it, but balm when you need to re­ceive it and love is al­ways eas­i­er to sus­pend where a rush to judge­ment feeds our su­pe­ri­or­i­ty.

If we are re­al­ly go­ing to care sin­cere­ly for peo­ple liv­ing with men­tal ill health, my first rec­om­men­da­tion is that we must com­mit to and seek out op­por­tu­ni­ties to ed­u­cate our­selves. Know­ing is im­por­tant both to help­ing and cor­rect­ing.

If you build per­son­al aware­ness, it be­comes eas­i­er to iden­ti­fy warn­ing signs.

Such self-ed­u­ca­tion al­lows for in­formed re­spons­es, rather than re­ac­tions that may hurt and harm in­stead of heal and help.

One does not have to be an ex­pert to help.

The site www.psy­chi­a­try.org says, “Try to show pa­tience and car­ing. Avoid be­ing judge­men­tal about their ex­pressed thoughts and ac­tions. Lis­ten.

“You do not have to be an ex­pert. You do not need to have all the an­swers. Start by ex­press­ing your con­cern, as well as your readi­ness to lis­ten and be there for the per­son… Re­as­sure them that you care about them and are there for them.

“Re­mind them that as dif­fi­cult as it might feel, seek­ing help is a sign of strength.”

There’s a start!