National Employment Week (NEW), a forum focusing on major social and economic issues is currently taking place. On NEW’s Mental Health Day, businessman Tom Murphy speaks out about the double-standards and stigma connected to mental and physical well-being.

WOULD YOU LIKE a fight?

It’s a perfectly reasonable question. I’m enquiring if you would like to engage in combat. Fisticuffs. Queensbury rules sir! But wait, first I should tell you I train with a professional Muay Thai kick-boxer. A man who stands nearly 6 foot tall, weighs 16 stone of pure muscle and who has fought in some of the biggest stadiums in Thailand. We’ve been training privately twice a week for years now.

So, would you like a fight? No? Ok, I understand. That information changes things I guess. Knowing your opponent trains in a combat sport would make most rational people think twice about getting in a ring. Not that I’m anything to write home about in the kick-boxing field but, still, anyone who trains regularly has to be better at it than the average Joe, right? Fitter at the very least!

I want to stay healthy

Now, I don’t train because I’m physically sick or ill. I train when I’m healthy because I want to stay healthy. I go to a trainer because it’s always easier to have outside help. A personal trainer helps motivate you and forces you to focus. They see the things you wouldn’t see yourself. When I’m training we work on the areas I’m not good at, areas I might otherwise quietly ignore.

When I don’t get this sort of exercise my physical well-being suffers. I get fat, lazy and sluggish. If I let that go to the extreme I risk all sorts of unpleasant consequences like heart disease etc. When I go training regularly I see improvement. I feel better. I’m stronger fitter and less tired.

I also see a counsellor regularly. I work on training my thinking to be rigorous and strong. Just like in physical training, we work on areas that need it and I do it not because I’m sick now, but because I want to stay healthy in the future and reap the benefits of good mental health.

Just like my boxing coach, my counsellor sees things from the outside that need work and I can access his expertise to improve. He shows me exercises and routines that will help me improve and together we can see the benefits over time.

Stigma

In many ways, these are similar activities. If I stop counselling I risk descending into patterns of thinking which are not positive and not good for me. Like physical exercise if I neglect it to the extreme I risk much more serious consequences.

My point to all of this is that when I tell people I have a physical trainer, they think I must be stronger and fitter as a result of it. But there is a stigma attached to attending a counsellor or psychologist. Somehow the implication is that you must be mentally weaker when in fact, the reverse is much more likely.

To me this is a harmful nonsense which stops our progression both as a nation and as individuals. It’s the seed of a stigma that needs to be challenged head on. We will quite happily tell someone we’re “dying with flu” but a touch of depression or low mood and its like the third secret of Fatima. That turns it from something which can be dealt with quite readily, into something much more dangerous.

If there is one message I would like people to take from the Mental Health Day of Employment Week it’s this: if someone tells you they are working on their mental well-being, don’t think they are mentally weak. If they told you they were training in a gym would you think they were physically weak?

A founder and director of Boards.ie and Adverts.ie , Tom is a successful entrepreneur. Winner of the Irish Internet Associations “Net Visionary” for social impact, he has been at the forefront of the internet in Ireland for 15 years.