Like I said in my review a few weeks ago, I really appreciated Erich W. Kopischke’s talk “Addressing Mental Health” this last General Conference. The motivator for him to give the talk was that his son who went on a mission suffered from anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and suicidality, and as a result, returned home after being out for four weeks. Elder Kopischke talked about the need for people who are supporting their loved ones who are facing mental health issues to learn more and to judge less:
Learning will lead to more understanding, more acceptance, more compassion, more love. It can lessen tragedy while helping us develop and manage healthy expectations and healthy interactions.
What struck me, though, thinking about his message was how many other messages in that very Conference were probably contributing to people’s mental health struggles. I realize it’s way beyond what one talk could accomplish, but there is so much preaching of perfectionism and black-and-white thinking that really needs to be toned down if GAs want to be serious about helping improve members’ mental health.
Here’s a list of some of the bits of Conference that I thought were possibly harmful to mental health. Of course, I’m no mental health expert. I’m just a run-of-the-mill neurotic Mormon, prone to depression and anxiety, so those are the types of issues I’ll focus most on. Also, note that I’m doing my church experience on the easiest setting, as a straight, white, married, cisgender man. There are plenty of messages in a typical Conference that are hard on single people, or LGBT people, or childless people, that really don’t strike me because I’m not their target. So what I’m struck by is probably a lower bound estimate for the total number of potentially harmful messages.