As part of a flagship mental health initiative previously funded by SGA, Trinity’s Wellness Services is a mental health app focused on improving the mental health of men, a population currently undertreated for mental illness. and the website MANUAL. Thanks to this initiative, all Trinity students, regardless of gender, can now access the app for free.
Unfortunately, despite some laudable qualities, the manual is an inadequate and flawed mental health resource, and my personal first experience with the Wellness Initiative and its $100,000 investment is disappointing. I think it turned out to be. Self-help, which is the ultimate meaning of the manual, is perfectly fine as long as it comes from the right sources. But it should not be the main pillar of mental health care, and the pervasiveness of a culture focused on individual self-help is emblematic of our fragmented sense of social responsibility.
On the surface level, MANUAL gets a few obvious things right. In a world filled with persistent misogyny and traditional patriarchal content, MANUAL’s video series primarily advocates for a gentler, more patient, and healthier model of masculinity. The app openly advocates for men to seek professional help for their mental health issues, and recommends mindfulness, yoga, meditation, and emotion as treatments for anxiety, depression, loneliness, and sexual frustration. We have dedicated several video series to practicing liberation. My research for this article primarily focused on his MANUAL videos on mental health that I watched on the service’s app. Users can also text messages about their mental health to MANUAL representatives.
Unfortunately, the manual stops short of identifying the systemic root of these problems: patriarchy. Patriarchal socialization forces us to repress our emotions, be angry and violent (especially towards women), ignore the feelings of those around us, and avoid treatment for mental illness. It will be. MANUAL is frustratingly close to fully identifying the problem. While this remains a welcome break from cultural narratives that blame men’s mental health on women and feminism, it does not require users to seriously reconsider their relationship with their gender. . It would be even more helpful if the app could offer a video series specifically dedicated to the relationship between gender and mental health, and how men can improve their emotional intelligence by considering their own self-perceptions of masculinity .
This shortcoming extends beyond the realm of gender. MANUAL as a whole represents a highly individualistic approach to mental health care. Even at its best, the main content is ultimately short videos and personal messages with her MANUAL representatives. This isn’t exactly a vessel for systemic change, and it would be disingenuous to act as if a fundamental redesign of the manual’s structure could solve this. Rather, the manual serves as a primary avatar representative of the lack of a comprehensive, systematic approach to mental illness in the United States.
Mental illness, like almost every other public health issue, is influenced by institutions and social systems. This is not to say that personal choices, genetics, and luck do not influence or cause medical problems, but rather that these can be exacerbated or alleviated by medical institutions. A great example of how systemic issues shape public health is the disproportionately high maternal mortality rates faced by Black women as a result of medical racism and institutional white supremacy.
Unfortunately, we often fail to consider mental health in the same systemic dimension. Trinity’s new initiative exemplifies this phenomenon. The resources provided, including the manual, are focused on providing resources that students can access in the process of self-improvement. While this could and probably will be very helpful to many Tigers, this initiative recognizes the student mental health crisis, yet why are so many students suffering? There is no mention of how this suffering can be prevented or limited. It’s debilitating. In addition to making resources available to individuals (which is still very important), mental illness must be treated as a systemic problem of public health, both at the Trinity level and at the national level. .
Our mental health is intensively influenced by the institutions and power systems around us. Americans have highly unequal access to mental health care, usually divided by race and class. Tens of millions of Americans work dead-end, low-wage jobs, are completely alienated from the workforce, and end up returning home to ingest a cultural diet of endless and creatively bankrupt remakes, sequels, and adaptations. It’s just that. The drug epidemic and housing crisis, driven by the criminal greed of economic elites, are exacerbating existing mental health problems and bringing them into the public eye.
The lack of universal health care in the United States exacerbates and deepens all of these problems, including the mental health crisis. Imagine a world in which all Americans had cheap and equal access to therapists and psychiatrists, or a world in which the physical and mental demands of work and school were a small part of our overall lives. These become a systematic approach to mental health.
This isn’t just the manual’s fault, but it’s a great example of how we don’t take mental health seriously as a social disease or public health crisis, and instead treat it as a path to personal improvement. My criticism is not that the content of the manual should be changed, other than as it relates directly to the role of gender roles in mental health. Rather, my issue is with its symbolic role in Trinity’s broader mental health efforts. If universities cared more deeply about the mental health of their students, they would not only provide access to resources like manuals, but also provide insight into how academic demands and inequalities among students impact mental health. You may want to re-examine whether you are giving
Ultimately, as a supplement to actual therapy or psychiatric treatment, the manual is fine and unlikely to cause any real harm, but most of its content can be found in better form elsewhere. can. I especially recommend the book “The Will to Change” by bell hooks. This book explores how patriarchy socializes men toward mental illness, and how this same socialization leads to violence and discrimination against women that maintains broader patriarchal power structures. It states more clearly how it forms the basis of. . Regardless of the shortcomings found in MANUAL, we look forward to further developing the mental wellness initiative and the resources it can bring to the Trinity community.
