I truly believe we need to seriously look at the education system in the UK (from experience) and start investing in high quality, psycho-education for children and teenagers at a much younger age. In a world where so many people are self-harming, have anxiety and depression it seems common sense to equip young people with the tools needed to feel better about themselves nd the shitty world around us.
I would go so far as to say that there must be a legal requirement for schools to provide this education across all age ranges. We should be doing mindfulness in primary school. We should help kids understand their thoughts and feelings so they know what to "do" with them.
The problem is we now have a generation that believes being mildly unhappy is "mentally ill" and it simply isn't. Life is shit. It is hard. It is painful and full of suffering. We need people to accept this and develop the ability to cope with and make sense of it. From my experience it has gone from one extreme to another. From emotional constipation to emotional haemophilia. Now everyone has some sort of disorder, anxiety, panic, depression, PTSD, OCD... We need a middle ground.
Hmmm... possibly... speaking as one who has worked with people with severe and enduring mental health problems there's a couple of things going on here.
1/ that yes, as you say, some people do conflate a general disappointment that their life has not turned out as they wish with mental health problems, particularly depression. I have seen that.
2/ there's also quite a lot of really rather fucked up people around. The group above pale into insignificance when compared to the disturbed, lonely and forgotten MH sufferers who struggle to access basic services and a level of respect from fellow human beings. And that's not just people with formal MH diagnoses, I have seen it ever more prominently since I entered my 5th decade that people who were a bit odd or maladaptive in their youth fully bloom into properly fucked up people in their 40s with depression, anxiety disorders, OCD and the like. It is real. It's just the previously these issues or personal peculiarities were swept under the carpet.
3/ there has also been a major change in the way in which society views mental health problems. Time was that MH suffers were shunned, made fun of and left to rot. I for one think it is important and good to have discussions about mental health - it's not something to be ashamed of, or to repress and hide in a mental cupboard. Mental health is better discussed, confronted.
I am a firm believer that the majority of mental health problems do stem from trauma and people attempt to cope with it. I also think that how society - friends, family, wider community - treats the individual has a large impact on the progression of that person's mental health. If you are treated with love, tolerance and respect, you will respond in a positive fashion. If you are ridiculed, marginalised and told you are a freak, you will slip beyond "normal society".
We are used to discussing good physical health - the need to exercise, eat well and so-on - but we rarely talk about ways of achieving and maintaining good mental health.
As I woman I used to know once said, "We all have a touch of mental health - just depends on how in touch your are with it."
There for the grace of god go I.