On (Not) Writing About Mental Wellbeing

Don’t disclose your disabilities in that job application

If you spent your last teenage year living in your bed beside a collection of moulding leftovers, or your sixteenth summer discovering the cloying, cruel sounds of Radiohead for the first time, you are not alone. You have maybe discovered teenage angst two years later than your peers, and you are wondering if it will fade or reshape itself into a more mature version of the resentment, outrage, and disappointment which describes any generation’s distressed youth. Otherwise, there is the possibility you discovered an inability to focus on minute tasks at the age of 11, or the first, exhilarating stages of mania at age eighteen. Hopefully, you are of the lucky bunch who seeked assistance through experts. Alternatively, whatever unsettling headspace one might be in becomes a fixture of their character.

Surprise, you have made it to your last summer of secondary school and it is time to apply to university. Your last year and everyone has bronzed from their time in Lisbon and hours spent teaching young kids how to backstroke, imperfectly, at the local swimming pool. Your complexion is pale, you realise you resemble the Victorian paintings they show in your modern history textbooks. And it is time to send in your university application, where they ask you a single, considered unimportant, yet possibly crucial question: do you have any disabilities? The most common response is to conceal: editing out mental illness, and any invisible or visible ways in which your own health differs from the norm, feels risk free. Disclosing one’s disabilities is an act which, legally, should be of no negative consequence. To say it is without social stigma is to ignore centuries of persecution on those deemed “insane”, and a culture which has made progress in acknowledging disabilities and mental illnesses, but not accommodating them.

But, let us be glad that the greatest concern with mental illness is whether it should be disclosed on a job application. In the sixteenth century one would have been put in line for the stake; witch trials persecuted the mentally ill in fear the accused was demonically possessed. In the 20th century, we briefly progressed to mental asylums. Such institutions were the products of horror stories — inspiring only for modern television — and have become modern playgrounds, occupied exclusively by teenagers looking for a spot to drink through their parent’s liquor cabinet in a night. Now, you may be lucky to grab a space in the NHS’ coveted spots as a patient.

If acknowledging one’s mental disorders in a university application is what sends a teenager into a spin — well, it is often irrelevant in a time when at least a quarter of the UK feels symptoms of depression, and over a third of students do. Struggling with mental illness is more common than playing football, being vegetarian or knowing how to juggle. It is more frequent than being left-handed or having 20/20 vision. Beneficially, an employer can make accommodations for the applicant. But in a country only a decade past an equality act — passed in 2010, protecting all from discrimination on the job— and less than a century post-mental asylums, social stigma is by and large ongoing. Keep your secrets close to you, because that is what mental illness is instructed to be — even if it is experienced by nearly all.

Nearly 80% of disabled applicants fear disclosing their disabilities in applications; I’d further suggest at the university age mental health is omnipresent. The stereotype of the angsty teen (emo, goth, sad-girl-types or those who form garage bands) is not seen in fusion with mental health diagnoses. Teenage angst is assumed impermanent and cannot be conflated with neurodivergence and medical appointments. “Have you ever experienced mental illness?” I see the question as far too benign: “Ketchup or mayonnaise? Tea or coffee? Pencil or pen?” would stir up far more controversy and tell me more about a person’s upbringing than an inquiry about their mental wellbeing. Is this to say it is unimportant, or normalised? When mental wellbeing is a universal experience, and to struggle with it likewise the same, I would still wonder why students are encouraged to edit it out of their university applications, and adults their prospective job offers.

Illustration: Lucy Westenberger