LOLA Issue Five

Mental Health Matters
Kevin Braddock
do something different. I know how to make
magazines, but it’s not a magazine that has
a series of contributors like Anxy and it’s not
a typical book where it’s just pages of text.
Tell us about the practice cards. When I
went back to the UK I was getting up every
morning in sort of a military way, trying
to bootcamp my way to being whatever
‘better’ is. It was completely overwhelming
and I was trying to do too much, so I
thought I’d write all the things down on
cards and try and do one or two every
day; maybe a breathing exercise or a long
walk, some voluntary work, or read some
philosophy – Marcus Aurelius, or something
from the AA book. There’s tonnes
upon tonnes of that stuff around and it’s
all really useful. Then I thought it could be
an extra little thing with this project.
The plan is to do another pack next year.
I think the practice cards have got quite a
lot of mileage in them.
Will there also be a second volume
of Torchlight? Yes. There’s a lot of stuff
we’re looking at doing; at least another two
packs of practice cards – we have ideas for
the second and a third – and I’d like to do
another issue, but it might take another
year or two to make that happen. It’s not a
typical magazine where we publish something
every three months.
I think the important thing is to generate
a network, a community. This person-to-person
thing is really important.
I’ve been running these
storytelling meetings in London.
I’d like to do a lot more of those.
There’s probably a digital technology
angle in there somewhere,
but I’m not sure where yet. We’ve
got ambitions, but we have to do
it in a way that we live our values.
And not undermine your mental
health by putting too much pressure
on it. Exactly. So we have to
have a mindful approach to doing
these things, you know? [Laughs]
The challenge with digital media
is that it’s the way to reach
people nowadays, but it has
an impersonality to it that’s
perhaps counterproductive to
what you’re trying to achieve.
Yes, I agree, and I think in the
technology world there are a lot
of people talking about empathy
– how to bottle and commodify
it – and I think that’s a massive
mistake. I don’t think you can
and I don’t think you should. Empathy is
something that happens between people.
There’s Big White Wall, which is the
NHS’ [digital platform]. You can write
your story and publish it online. I don’t
know if it works, and I don’t know if
writing something and posting it on the
internet is really helpful to anyone.
Well, maybe the question is what happens
after that. No one needs a new platform to
publish their thoughts anonymously online.
I think if you’re unwell it’s really important
to be heard. To speak to someone and
have the feeling that they’re listening to you,
and that they care about what you’re saying.
But the internet isn’t like that. Nobody gives
a fuck what you’re saying.
Do you think mental health is a topic
that’s especially important for men
to talk about? I think that it’s clearly
an acute problem with men. I saw some
statistic that said the reason the suicide
rate among men is higher is because men
are more likely to act on it. It’s not like
they have more suicidal ideations; they’re
just more willful about it. But I think depression
transcends gender, race, status,
everything. It’s a problem that anyone can
have. Torchlight is not a magazine for men
about depression. I wasn’t thinking in a
demographic way about it.
I think with men it’s just about how you
get to them. I mean generally there’s obviously
a big problem with how we socialise
men. I was talking to someone the other
day about soldiers. I did this story years
ago for GQ about soldiers who were injured
in battle and had PTSD, and apparently
they will only ask for help after ten years
of suffering, because the army trains emotions
out of soldiers. There’s this organisation
called Combat Stress, and they do
really good work for veterans with PTSD.
I don’t know how we educate young
people, but from what I hear there’s much
more education about emotional fluency
these days, which is obviously good.
At the moment, social media seems to
be flooded with nihilism and memes
about suicide and depression – ‘sad
reacts only’, etcetera. Do you think
that kind of thing is part of a new
emotional fluency, or do you feel it’s
counterproductive? I suppose one
change I would like to see is that people
don’t think it’s cool to kill yourself, and
don’t think that it’s glamorous or sexy.
With Torchlight the message is ‘ask for
help’. That’s the point. It’s what I did and
everything changed. It would be great to
think that people think it’s OK to do that,
rather than bottling it up and taking it
away and acting upon suicidal ideations.
There is help around, and I think most
people, if they’re asked to help, probably
would. Even if it’s a complete stranger.
You mentioned Marcus Aurelius
earlier. Meditations was the first thing
we read after Torchlight. Ah, you got it?
Seneca’s very good as well.
What are you reading at the moment?
Going Sane by Adam Phillips. Phillips is a
Freudian analyst, and he writes very intelligently.
His argument is that there’s no such
thing as sanity, and that basically we’re all
mad and what the medical establishment
has done for a long time is imprison people
in a diagnosis. He talks about how society
thinks about mental illness compared to
a model of sanity which in many ways is
insane. It’s like, why do we think it’s sane
to accumulate tonnes upon tonnes of
possessions? Or have more money than
we need? It’s very interesting.
We’ll check it out. Thanks so much
for your time, Kevin. No problem, it’s
good to talk.
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34 Issue Five