Stephen Fry in conversation with Professor Christina van der Feltz-Cornelis for York Unlimited

i'm really very pleased to meet you and uh yes and thank you for joining me in this conversation and actually the context is the york unlimited campaign of the university and that is about mental health research and student mental health which we also think is very important and yeah i'm one of the professors working on that in the university and um we thought that you are an advocate for mental health and and mind in particular and and you have also given much thought on your own mental health and so we thought you you would be an excellent excellent person to uh to give us your your insights on that and actually well we are now currently of course in this pandemic um which is it's quite something and and we are it has huge effects on our way of life um we are in lockdown we have to socially distance which is not at all in our nature i think at least of most of the people and we can lose our loved ones we can lose our jobs [Music] so and actually when the pandemic will be over it might very well be that that there are still mental health issues then and we i wondered can you give me your thoughts about what according to you would be the greatest concerns then for mental health well i think it's interesting with you having a the background of a university campus one of the first things i think about um is youth young people um it seems to be um and i think we've known this instinctively in the culture before um you know science and epidemiology and uh empirical research proved it that late adolescence into early adulthood seems to be a very vulnerable time for young people it seems to be slightly more men than young men than young women but that's not especially important because it's a lot in both cases and probably people know the sort of urban myths that have been in existence for decades when when when students arrive at a university someone will tell them you know this university has the highest suicide rate in europe and every every student has been told that about their university whether you went to bristol or york or cambridge there's a sort of black humor about that and what it is is the fact that people have always recognized that young people leaving home gathering together in the intense atmosphere of a university um are especially subject to self-doubt feeling excluded and for anxieties and stresses to build up in enormous ways now things have changed in the past 10 or 15 years in terms of pastoral care especially in the realm of mental health for students both from the students unions and from the chaplaincies and from the medical departments of the university so there's a lot good going on but this pandemic of course amplifies and magnifies so many of those issues and i think partly people are worried about whether they're getting it wrong you know there's this terrible it when it's just a normal a normal academic year students are fearful that they're losing out they're not catching up everybody's cleverer than they are they've missed out on various social skills and that they're just lonely and they can't join in um but when you add to this the pandemic there's a feeling that other people have got more friends a better support network or other people seem to be more cheerful because social media is showing them as baking cakes and laughing with their friends and i'm not like that i'm lonely and i'm anxious and i'm very very upset about my future which i can't i can't see it all these things obviously make what is already a hot house a university campus an even more threatening place for many people um it's it's it's important to allow young sensitive people to be sensitive to be afraid um the whole sort of point of student fellowship is that you can explore this uh amongst yourselves um and laugh at yourself and be supported and have a kind of healthy ability to to examine your own mental and cognitive nature because that's part of what the university allows you a space to do but all that is now out of the window and it is it is a it is a yeah well well we have been talking a lot in in the university about the students and and how we can support them because it is obvious that that this is a very challenging time and they are very young you're right and and the thing is growing older actually makes you more resilient because um you can think of ways you used to try to cope with problems in the past and and you know a bit what worked and what didn't but for young people it's everything happens for the first time i mean you go to the university for the first time you leave the house of your parents you're trying to study it's all new and so that is new and then there's this pandemic well the pandemic i think for all of us is new that that we can say and that unites us i think that um we did a study and we did a survey amongst students in university and staff actually because we were concerned about that and the interesting thing was that we found that certainly people are stressed they felt all kinds of stress and concerns and anxious anxieties and and lower mood but actually many of them also felt resilience and uh yes so it's very interesting yes we thought that and and we are exploring that currently because actually it i we think that it can be very helpful to know what enhances your resilience what helped you because obviously we are humans we are used to we have to cope it yes and it's very interesting isn't it resilience is a fascinating word it's not one we often use and an even more old-fashioned english word i suppose it's fortitude and and this reminds me of uh an interesting phenomenon which is the rising popularity of the uh ancient philosophy of stoicism there are all kinds of apps and and it's kind of melded with forms of mindfulness that are available online and in different in different forms um and and of course the the major takeaway as an american would say of stoicism is about resilience it's not that you don't show emotion that's a but it is about an acceptance of of the things you can't change and you know what yeah it's they seem very obvious and very cliche but there's something rather encouraging about stoicism in in it you know it's not it's not an intense immersion into a constant you know it's very easy to pick at the mental scabs and constantly be examining one's mental state in such a way that one thinks one has to be improving it and getting it right and so much of the anxieties that people feel i think are our guilt at somehow not having got life right and the secret i always want to get across is nobody gets life right there is no golden path to happiness what you see is other people being happiness is merely their particular mask and uh and it it you accept and that accept yourself and accept certain states of mind that needn't be medicalized um loneliness sorrow i think a lot of people don't realize that it's perfectly natural to wake up in the morning remember this pandemic and what it's doing to the world and to society and be sorrowful it doesn't have to have a special psychological word it is a genuine sadness that i think is very healthy we should be sad we should grieve over the various losses that are being every day being felt by people socially culturally and in terms of their own strength of mind and and uh i i'm certainly not suggesting we don't look at um genuine medical um mental health issues that are real conditions and so on but the history of mental health and you'll know this better than i is is a very difficult one because diagnosis is so much harder when it comes to the mind behavior and mood and personality yeah than it is with the the bones uh you know an orthopedic surgeon doesn't really have to keep redefining the femur but if you look at um some people may be familiar with the the the the diagnostic and statistical manual the dsm as it is which over the decades has attempted to to define various mental conditions famously and notoriously homosexuality was a mental health disorder not very long ago in my lifetime yes i know yeah so and that's an extreme example of the point i'm making that that there's a constant reassessment of how we talk about the mind behavior feeling uh and and so on and and the major right yes and i think in that respect actually what is very important is to realize that we do not live in a vacuum we we live in a society for example what you say about the homosexuality there will be in the old greek society it was not a problem at all um at least for the men i don't know how it was for the women actually but uh but um um if society does not accept it then it becomes a problem and then you have issues and and that that that may uh destabilize you enormously but um yes i think the role of society also in loneliness you mentioned loneliness i think be fined in research that there are real associations between loneliness and mental health but also physical health issues for example pain yeah i think that's right and it's a thing that now more understood perhaps than it used to be the relationship between mental health and physical outcomes the what you know what you as a professional would call the morbidity levels are very high that um and this brings us on to a thing that people in universities and all over all over britain and the world will understand and that is that those whose interior weather is tumultuous and is causing them pain or numbness or over excitement and all the variations that you can have inside especially if it's not been diagnosed the natural thing is to reach for something to to quell this noise and that could be alcohol or some form of recreational other kind of drug an opiate or a stimulant you know we we know the story it is very it is no accident that young people are drawn to changing their minds with with drugs because what's going on in their minds is not happy for them they're not and it's all very well to tell them that further down the road that this will be a wholly destructive and be a worse outcome that that's easily said the fact is if they're if they're just if only alcohol quietens their mind or only cocaine or speed gives them the ability to get up and enjoy some sort of music and conversation in life it's pretty hard to be told no no no no no we looked into that actually because as i said we were very interested in resilience and and we explored the people who felt resilient if they did anything different from the other students or had had certain characteristics and actually the main one was that they exercised so they exercised and the non-resilience the rent once did not exercise now those could have reasons not for example if they had some medical condition that made that difficult for them or they had to socially isolate because of the virus and couldn't go out to exercise but in general exercising is very good i think um i think that's right i i think the the growth in understanding of the circadian rhythms so going out for a morning walk the sunlight on the eye as well as the accident itself and the dopamine rushes and the rewards you get the whole business that on and also on the other side the uh increasing research on on the um the neurons in one's own gut and the microbiome the biota and all of these things seem to have an effect on mental well-being a very strong one the the thing i would say is and this is just going by my memory when when i'm in my 20s i don't think about my health i might think about my vanity and do a bit of bodybuilding or i might still enjoy sport yeah we get to my age you can buy all kinds of prebiotic gummies and you can check your walking on your watch oh yeah you care for your body because you are aware of how contingent and provisional your health is but for the young the whole reward of being young is they never have to think about when they stand up going like yes yes it's just really um it's the more one looks at the world as it currently is pandemic and all it's just so unfair on the young yeah you used to be such a reward but you know the world used to be full of old people wagging their fingers at the young saying you don't know how lucky you are and the world now is full of old people pointing at young people and saying you don't know how unlucky you are yeah when i was your age you know i had a car and a flat and you'll never have a house you'll never have a job you know it's actually it's how young people haven't risen up in some sort of revolt it's more than i can understand well sometimes they do sometimes they do it's it's i think yeah i think they do nothing like as much as they did in the 1960s and 70s oh well that's true yes i suppose one things we haven't talked about again this you know i think like you i'm i tend towards the empirical rather than the rational and so you look at social media and say well it must do this and it must do that enough even now enough research hasn't really been done to prove precisely what the effects of social media are on the young but we can all certainly as i say without being fully empirical we can all sort of reason that there there is something going on in terms of people's sense of self when measured against this vast conversation of the world and it's we all remember what it's like when in the playground at school if we were unpopular for some you know for a week for some reason everybody hated us arriving at school and having to meet people's eyes and being alone in the corner of the playground this is magnified by young people killing themselves because they've lost followers that day on some social media service and those things are deeply disturbing but on the other hand we have to recognize that there is an ability people have to communicate with others who are like themselves uh and to find resources to help them if they are unhappy well it's kind of like of which never existed yeah it can be for example if you think of transgender people i i used to be a doctor providing mental health support and and that was long before the social media and i found they had a hard time to to get support because it's a very rare condition so it's not easy to find people who have yeah who can talk about that with you and then there was a lot of stigma of course and um that was not easy for them and and now actually i realized that it is much easier to to to be adopted in a group that has the same ideas maybe have a conversation somebody in turkey somebody in canada and and um so in that sense it uh can be very helpful the only thing is you you should somehow be able to to protect young people from all negative effects and and manipulation or that that can also happen in the context yeah yeah and um yes exactly uh uh and there is um you know there was a there was more talk maybe two years ago than there is now about uh what you might call in a very cheap way the fragility of the young it seems that they're more easily upset by they're triggered by microaggressions and you know people went overboard in their analysis of this and claimed that every campus in in the western world was a was it was a minefield of potential snowflakes and actually of course it was wildly exaggerated and whenever you examined the story that was in the headline you looked into it deeply and you found that it melted away into nothing and it really wasn't a story at all i think in in terms of of the pandemic and and how how we could cope with it to to preserve our mental health are there any special things also maybe from your own experience that you think would be good uh would be something to to try um as a coping strategy i think um i'm very weary and always have been of of goal setting because um well two one if you fail to get the goal you feel guilty and you failed and also whenever you reach a goal you go well is that it what next that was the call so i you know i'm certainly not one for make a list and do this and make a list and do that but i i absolutely you know even in the even in this winter if you can just get out and um you know what look at the way the snow is on the trees just engage with the natural world to some extent and um you can if not a goal exactly but you can set one can set oneself a challenge to see if one can shift one's sleeping patterns in some way so that they are just what you think might be the best kind of sleeping pattern and there are all kinds of apps that help with white noise pink noise brown noise um waves breaking on the shore and waterfalls and other noises that do really help with sleep and and so you can just sort of concentrate on on different aspects but not as a not as a firm task that you would fail or succeed in but it's a kind of experiment with yourself let's see if i can do that let me see if i can just shift my sleeping to an hour earlier to bed every night and then i really are up every morning or the other way around you know it doesn't it just small changes that you can make physically about yourself um i kind of tell tell your mind that you are in control of yourself yes i think that would help very much because then it would it would alleviate the feeling of being overwhelmed by all these things that happen around us and and uh press conferences of governments saying and now we have a look down and we won't be traveling until the end of the winter and whatever they say whereas if you if you are able to to try something and then you have control over that and it makes you feel better that that is very good for you yes and and never to feel uh as i say never to feel that you have failed in lockdown that you're never to be uh never to be made to feel small because other people are posting such fabulous lives because that's all that's all nonsense yes i think yeah well you should not beat yourself up i think that that brings us back to the stoicism if things happen to you and so there's the bad thing happening to you but you can make it worse by thinking all kinds of things about yourself that you failed that's that's very wrong you could have seen it coming well nobody sees this coming i mean that's it and so you shouldn't beat yourself up on top of it because then not only the bad thing happened but you're also yeah so i think that that would be a very and you know there's um um an old story about the queen of sheba and solomon and when queen of people visited solomon and um she said to him i they were talking about things she said i i have heard of a magical ring or medal gold coin um and that if you if you own it if you are happy it makes you sad but if you're sad it makes you happy just magic and solomon thought for a bit and he clapped his hands and he whispered to his minister and solomon said i i have this coin i'm having it made for you oh really yeah and he said we'll just wait and we'll have some sherbet in the meantime and then this goldsmith comes with this leather glove and this gold coin that he's just minted um in his in his and it's dips it in water to cool it and solomon says that this this coin if you're happy it'll make you sad if you're sad it'll make you happy and she takes it and it has written on it this too shall pass yeah and that's the point if you are happy you have to remember that you might not be happy tomorrow it will pass and that's sad and that can make some people almost not trust their happiness because they can't live in it they're going to go i don't say i'm happy because whenever i do that drop something on me a great you know and similarly if you if you're sad you sometimes don't believe you're ever going to be happy again but just to remember that this too shall pass but you know you know and it's easier for people my age because time accelerates and you tend to be more patient when you're older less impatient at least and you're also more aware that if something bad is happening eventually it'll you know the wheel fortune will turn and things you know it will pass but when you're young you tend to be more impatient and things that are bad seem to threaten to be permanent and it's just to remember that you know time will flow on and things will improve because at that time you don't know yet very well how to to turn things around or to deal with adversity you learn that over your life actually i was thinking when you said that about chasing happiness uh aristotle said whether you have a happy life that is something that you decide at the end of your life and you look back that's absolutely right you look back and and and yeah so and then you say well yes my life was what's happening although you had you there all kinds of things happened we're not nice at all but it depends on what you yeah how sort of moderation that you achieve but also it's very important to remember that it's so always okay to ask for help it's always okay and you can prove this because you know how it's okay if someone asks you for help you know if you can't provide it then of course you can't but it's actually a it's a fine thing you know the human's ability to try and help each other or to give advice or to make suggestions is part of what validates us and makes us feel good about ourselves so you should never feel bad about asking someone for advice for help for somewhere to to go to calm down some sort of anything of that nature people are there to help and and most people are very very good at uh yes they're doing that to making you know making a good effort stephen i think this is a very good message to to end our conflict yeah i agree you said that very well thank you so much not at all it's delight talking to you yes and good luck with all your work and um to everybody watching and thank you let's uh see each other when all this is over yes okay bye bye you

Channel: York Global Alumni Association

Views: 2,413

Keywords: university of york, york unlimited, stephen fry, mentally fit york, mental health

Id: 1U0zd0VSQRc

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021