An idea for all population mental health and changing society as an objective of mental healthcare

Rather than see mental disorders as a cost to society and a disability
see them as the canary in the mine. Canaries were taken into coal pits
because they'd die before the miners would die from gas poisoning.

--skip past this section of you're interested in getting to the crux of
the idea--

I'm thinking about this because I'm thinking about sleep[. I haven't
drunk anything tonight so I'm not asleep yet. It's the first time in a
week I haven't had a good few drinks in the evening. It's not surprising
I'm finding it hard to sleep. I'm currently sleeping a lot. 10-12 hrs a
day. It isn't enough but that's to do with suffering rather than
anything else. My mood is ok at the moment.

It lead me to think about a Harvard study on sleep. It found that 8hrs
is associated with living longer and 6hrs is associated with better
performance at work. It is a study I use to ask people a question: would
they prefer to sleep 6 or 8hrs?

It also lead me to ponder what 12hrs might do. I suspect there's a bell
curve for the living longer thing. I remembered another study noting
that people used to sleep 9.5hrs before the invention of the lightbuilb.

--you can read on from here--

Seasonal Affective Disorder is now a recognised syndrome. It took a
while for psychiatry to accept this as a mental illness.

Everyone goes through a degree of change in mood and whatever else
during winter. Obviously SAD is an extreme.

A person with SAD might be able to get reduced hours during winter to
assist with their SAD.

But why do it just for them. Why not do it for everyone? Why not ,make
standard practice to reduce working hours during the winter months.

We are, after all, still mammals. For all our technology and stuff we
forget our basic animal needs. In winter we want to hibernate and rest.
I think it's why so many people feel the winter blues.

So why not change society to accept that humans have these animal needs
too? Bring the 35hr working week down to 26hrs or whatever. Allow people
to hibernate.

It takes this principle of seeing mental disorder as a canary in a mine
to begin to think about the changes in society. Rather than see their
disability as a problem see them as the warning light that there's
something wrong.

Allowing everyone to benefit from the privilege extended through
disability discrimination law is the true path to an equal society for all.