[Applause]
hi everyone I'd like to begin if I may
by doing a little bit of a straw poll so
I would like you to raise your hand if
you have had any issue whatsoever with
your physical health and to be clear the
common cold counts in this context
that's 100% of you and that's completely
expected we all understand in this room
that we have this thing called a body
and we understand that it malfunctions
sometimes and also the term physical
health issue can cover all manner of
things really serious things like cancer
right through broken bones to
accidentally getting a Haribo strawberry
wedged in your left nostril which
actually happened to a friend of mine
I'm gonna ask you another question
what I would like you to do now is raise
your hand if you think that you have
ever had an issue with your mental
health okay that's about a third of you
and that stands to reason statistically
one in four of us in this room will
experience a mental health issue this
year and over the course of a lifetime
experts think it's closer to a third or
maybe even half but what if I reframe it
for you slightly what if I say a mental
health issue
technically it's anything which
negatively impacts the way you think
feel relates to other people and/or
behave so it can include mental
illnesses things like depression and
anxiety disorders eating disorders
personality disorders they're all
included within mental health issue but
it also includes things like heartbreak
stress anxiety nervousness bereavement
if you've ever lost a person or an
animal that you love if you've ever had
a friendship difficulty technically
you've experienced a mental health issue
so now raise your hand if you think
you've ever had a mental health issue
and we're back to 100% which is what I
expected one in four of us in this room
will experience a mental health issue
this year that
can be defined within diagnostic
criteria but four in four of us in this
room have got a head with a brain in it
which means that we all have a status of
mental health whether your mental health
is good right now whether you're
struggling a little bit whether you're
somewhere in between your mental health
is something that you can understand and
monitor and nurture in just the same way
as you do your physical health and your
status of mental health will also change
it will fluctuate throughout your life
in response to things like environmental
changes and life circumstances and
hormones I should probably introduce
myself good night my name is Natasha and
my job involves going into about three
schools a week throughout the UK and
increasingly Beyond throughout the world
and when I'm in there I do talks like
I'm doing right now but I also conduct
research and I've done that straw poll
that I just did with you probably
thousands of times and the results are
always the same what I have noticed
though over my more than decade doing
this job is that this huge nationwide
conversation about mental health has
been kick-started here in the UK and
that's in no small part thanks to people
your age is absolutely been young people
who have been front and center of this
dialogue about mental health and perhaps
somewhat inevitably we've also had a bit
of a backlash so who had the
commentators saying that we're a nation
of snow flakes who can no longer deal
with the realities of life there was
also one expert who coined the phrase
emotional obesity and she used that to
describe people like yourselves who are
articulating and experiencing emotions
almost constantly and I've thought a lot
about this I think one of the problems
is we're having this conversation about
mental health at cross-purposes because
people use different words in different
ways you know one person might say oh
I'm really depressed today my football
team lost last night
then someone else uses the word
depressed and they mean it in the
clinical sense they mean they feel
absolutely numb from head-to-toe and
from the outside looking in it's often
really difficult to tell the difference
between those two uses as nobody's given
as
a phrase book I wrote a book about the
English language in relation to mental
health which is a lot more exciting than
it sounds because the English language
arguably has more words than any other
dialect I know my English teacher
certainly believed this she told us
there was never an excuse to be lazy
with our vocabulary and probably all of
you have had an English teacher at some
point say I do not want to see the words
good or nice in your essay you have to
be more imaginative than that and it's
because in English we have all of these
different words to play with so that
stands to reason but what you'll
discover if you look at how those words
are apportioned English has one of the
smallest emotional vocabularies of any
developed nation on earth and of course
the historical explanation for that
is that English was first spoken by
English people and we're not
particularly well known for our ability
to emot-- and express so you look at
other languages you get very jealous I
did at least German was my favorite any
German speakers in Germans brilliant
they are so specific in their emotional
vocabulary they have words like
schadenfreude er that means to take joy
from someone else's misfortune mmm I
love that word they also have 15
different words to describe 15 distinct
types of anger which makes much more
sense if you think about it we've got
irritation annoyance anger rage
incandescence but you're just turning up
the dial on the same feeling there if
you've got a person in front of you
that's angry there's at least 15
different places that that anger could
have come from and yet we don't really
acknowledge that I could do this whole
TED talk on the words I found in other
languages that are better than what we
have in English but I won't I'll just
tell you my favorite one my favorite was
is a Russian slang term and it's Nana lu
blue and it means I love you but I hate
you in this moment think about how much
easier your conversations with your
parents would have been if you'd have
had a word like that we don't in English
we're very vague in our emotional
vocabulary and one of the consequences
of that is people will miss
use clinical terms all the time so you
hear people say things like I'm a little
bit OCD now OCD it's such a specific
condition it used to be listed under
anxiety disorders in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual which is like the
Bible for psychologists now it actually
has its own section and it's categorized
by what I called the washing machine
thoughts you know the thoughts that go
round and round and round in your head
and after a while that gets really
exhausting you think I wish I could stop
thinking about this bike on and the only
way that you can give yourself a little
bit of rest buyer and comfort is to
engage in compulsive behaviors and if
you're not able to access help at that
point those compulsive behaviors can
start to interfere with your ability to
function and live when people say I'm a
little bit OCD what they tend to mean is
I prefer it when things are tidy which
is not the same or you'll hear people
say oh I'm so depressed because the
shoes that I wanted are sold out in my
size or as somebody who has an anxiety
disorder my personal pet hate is when
people say I just had a total panic
attack and what they mean is for a
moment there I thought I lost my keys
and when you've gone through the
clinical versions of those it's really
annoying when people do that but my
sense is I don't think they're trying to
diminish mental illness I think what's
happening is the word for how they feel
doesn't exist so they're just grasping
for the closest possible thing and the
net result of all of that is that if a
friend or someone you know comes to you
and says something like I feel really
anxious you have no idea what they mean
you know what you would mean if you said
it there's an exercise that I do
sometimes in classrooms where I give
everyone a slip of paper and I ask them
to complete the sentence I feel
depressed and and when those slips of
paper come back you'll get everything
from hungover to suicidal that is a
really broad range of emotions
potentially caught up in those two
little syllables and you can see that as
a frustration it is quite frustrating
sometimes because it means we're
misunderstanding each other but it also
presents you with a really
Niq opportunity to improve brain
chemistry so let me explain there is a
chemical called dopamine dopamine is a
neurotransmitter what that means is it's
responsible for carrying signals between
your brain cells and you've probably
heard of dopamine because we talk about
it a lot in relation to addiction but in
fact you've all got dopamine in your
brain and dopamine in the right
concentration is what allows you to
learn and unlearn and focus and
concentrate reflects think about how you
might want to move forward those are all
the skills that you would want somebody
to bring to the table if you were going
to have an emotional conversation with
them and what neuroscientists now
understand about dopamine is that
ninety-three percent of it is secreted
in an area of your brain called the
limbic system that's your emotional
control center at your heart actually so
that's saying if you have someone's
heart their head comes with them is
absolutely true if you can make someone
feel loved
you control the dopamine secretion and
they can think more clearly and by loved
in this context what I mean is this make
them feel safe show genuine interest in
them and let them know that whatever it
is they tell you you're not going to
judge them that's what I mean by love
and the quickest way to do that is to
ask open questions things like how long
have you felt like this if you told
anyone else what were you doing when you
first noticed you felt this way is there
anything that makes it better or worse
can you feel it in your body is a great
question because the brain and the body
don't exist in silos they affect one
another eight out of ten primary age
children who go to their school nurse
with stomachache the reason their tummy
hurts is that they're anxious one of the
experts I work with recently told me
that 90% of adult back pain has no cause
that you could see in an x-ray it's
where people store their stress I have
what feels like a lump in my throat it's
not a lump it's my throat muscles
constricting because this is where I
hold my tension can see a few of you
nodding it's very common in teenagers
and just so you know I call the lump
Nigel long story if you follow me on
social media and I say I'm feeling a bit
Nigel II today that's what I'm talking
about when you ask questions like this
you're not only getting a better
understanding of how that person is
using the words they're using you're
also controlling the dopamine secretion
they walk away from that conversation
with better brain chemistry more clarity
of thought more able to deal with their
challenge than when they came in and you
also both probably have a better
understanding of what's required what
help and support they might need if any
but what about the accusation that all
of this is making us snow flaky I think
one of the biggest misconceptions about
what mental health campaigners like
myself and other people I work with are
trying to achieve is that we are trying
to insulate young people from any kind
of bad feeling that we're trying to
protect you from any sort of stress or
anxiety at all that's not only
unrealistic that would be unhealthy
ironically in fact sometimes the
healthiest thing that you can do when
you experience an uncomfortable emotion
when you're going through something
tough is to just sit with it and feel it
and work through it and what helps you
do that is a sense of belonging feeling
part of a community that's what makes us
resilient and what helps us do that is
genuine connection and authentic
communication so all of these skills I'm
talking about have intrinsic value just
having that conversation helps and of
course it's not a substitute for any
professional care that might be required
but not every mental health issue needs
professional care the mental health
equivalent of a cold needs the mental
health equivalent of a few days rest and
lots of fluids so I think the future of
mental health campaigning is one of
greater specificity it's no longer
enough to say one in four of us will
experience a mental health issue we need
to acknowledge that there are thousands
of potential mental health issues out
there and there are just as many best
spoke solutions
and most of all we need to acknowledge
that every single person in this room is
suffering from a very serious condition
and that condition is the human
condition thank you for listening
[Applause]
[Music]
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you