Screenwriter and playwright Aaron Sorkin is one of my favorite writers, period. His work includes “The West Wing,” “A Few Good Men,” “The American President,” HBO’s “The Newsroom” (which has one of the greatest monologues of all time presented by Jeff Daniels) and many other credits — including a re-write of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which just completed a Broadway run. If you know his work well, you will notice that from time to time I will borrow a phrase of his (sometimes without even realizing it) — his words are engrained in me. Sometimes they are so spot-on, simply, no other words will do.
Here is one of the Sorkin-isms that’s been hanging on me for a couple of months now: “We’re doing a big thing badly.”
“We’re doing a big thing badly” doesn’t refer to a daily error or faux pas but rather implies that we’re not focused on the right thing, and we need to make amends before this giant avoidance becomes even more unwieldy. What makes this phrase even more salient is that it’s in the present tense. Hindsight is easy, almost forgivable — “We DID a big thing badly” — but when you say, “We’re DOING a big thing badly,” it’s a confession, an acknowledgement that we should have known better while still in the moment.
Mental health. With mental health, we’re doing a big thing badly.
Even with my intent to write about this today, I still took 200 words before I could even put the words on the page. And that’s the point.
We don’t talk about mental health and the effects it has on all of us every day. Physical health we discuss frequently. Broken legs, heart disease, breast cancer, testicular cancer, even irritable bowel syndrome most people discuss without a qualm. But not mental health.
Sure, we recognize it in very broad terms, like the number of columns that referenced, “The COVID-19 pandemic was tough on people’s mental health.” Yet we don’t say things like, “I stared at my computer screen for 40 minutes and was paralyzed because I’m totally overwhelmed with the amount of work I need to do and the state of the world.”
Or we don’t say, “None of my co-workers like me, I’m not sure why they even put up with me.” Or we don’t say, “I hate my life right now.” Or we don’t say, “I didn’t go to that work event because being around a lot of people triggers me.”
Don’t look at this column as my personal cry for help. Though all are written in first person, only one of the phrases above is actually something I have felt. The other three are phrases that I’ve heard from friends and loved ones at one time or another.
We need to begin talking about these things. Look around and you’ll see we’re not okay. And you know, it’s okay to recognize that we’re not okay. But we hide what’s going on because of the shame it makes us feel. Yet the signs are everywhere.
Has anyone noticed the spike in road rage lately, and people insistently merging into traffic regardless of whether the other drivers can let them in? Have you noticed the stretch of Route 1 between Bath and Cook’s Corner becoming the Autobahn in the last two months? What about friends canceling plans more frequently due to “that thing that’s going around”? The signs are everywhere.
Stress, depression and anxiety are running rampant right now, yet we’re doing little to address it. Jess Packard, a local counseling professional and chamber member through her business Rise Up in Brunswick, has shared this statistic at several Chamber After Hours events: The average person with anxiety waits over 10 years to seek out treatment. Ten years. Wow.
Our political season isn’t helping either. A perfect storm of OPEC nations cutting gas production precisely at the time when there is a war between oil-producing Russia and Ukraine, and oil companies having decided now is a great time for their largest quarterly profits in their company’s history, creates sticker shock at the gas pump ($9.5 billion third-quarter profit for Shell, twice as much as Q3 2021; Exxon Mobil third-quarter profit was $18.7 billion, triple Q3 2021 and highest profit in their 152-year history, according to whitehouse.gov). You can’t drive down any road without being reminded of high gas prices and high home heating oil prices. That worry and stress builds on us.
Then look at the commercials this election cycle. How many “crime-is-taking-over-our-country” ads have we heard when actually violent crime is lower than any time in the last 30 years, and much lower. According to a Pew Research Center study released Oct. 31 titled “Violent crime is a key midterm voting issue, but what does the data say?” it’s determined that the violent crime rate is 16.5%, which “was statistically unchanged from the year before, below pre-pandemic levels and far below the rates recorded in the 1990s.” In fact, the violent crime rate of 16.5% is 10% lower than a decade ago, half as much as 2006 (15 years ago) and dramatically lower than the mid-90s when the rate was over 50%.
Yet we keep seeing these ads preying on our fears. Other political ads talk about murder, incarceration, removing social security for seniors, prescription drug costs, climate devastation or being taxed out of your home. Why are they scaring you? For your vote. To move you to act on their behalf.
Do they care about what this is doing to our collective mental health? Not at all. Are any suggesting increased mental health days or insurance covering therapy? No. We don’t make mental health a priority. What will that cost us in the future? Next week, I’ll share a few ideas on how we can begin to re-prioritize to get better mental health outcomes. Our employees need it, and so do you. And so do I.
Cory King is executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber of Commerce.
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