Re: Tokyo 2021
Reply #24 –
Fundamentally I agree with you. Mental health gets used to explain away all manner of shocking behaviour, but I'd have to say that the last 18 months has probably tested more people more frequently, and some people who have previously had it all together are likely falling apart, and I've seen some other people I previously thought were a bit fragile actually coping better than expected and my assumption is that they probably feel a little bit more like they have a reason to not be at their best which relieves the pressure.
Mental health scenarios aren't that black and white. Where you are good and you are bad. Think more like a dam wall holding back a river. For the most part, it holds and it does a decent job but you don't really see the leaks until its at breaking point. The river is pretty much life. The leaks where we see people starting to crack. You'll see it on peoples faces and hear it in their voices where they just look defeated, and then one day the dam wall breaks and it takes a lot of help to put it back together again, but it is repairable provided there is no permanent damage done which prevents that from occurring. The river symbolises life and its pressures. The dam wall peoples ability to hold it all together. The breaking is more the point where people tend to act in a manner that's out of character.
The modern issue is that its become a reason to explain what appears to be poor behaviour, but the hard part is determining whether or not the bad behaviour is the cause or the effect.
Understand all that, having been close to a couple of people that have had mental breakdowns, at the point when the dam wall broke, the last thing on their mind was to talk "publicly" (obviously I dont mean hold a press conference). Quite the opposite. As you say, it manifests itself differently in different people.