#LISMentalHealth: a conversation that we need to have

Librarians and bloggers Cecily Walker and Kelly McElroy founded the first-ever Library & Information Studies Mental Health Week in late January of this year. Using the twitter hashtags #LISMentalHealth and #LISMentalHealthWeek, people shared stories  about their experiences with mental health challenges while working in the library field. Here are three of my favourite blog posts that were shared throughout the conversation.

Tips for Being Functional by Ruby Warren

Ruby Warren writes about her experiences with mental illness and gives tips about functioning with work stressors as a mentally ill professional. These include: knowing your triggers, planning for your brain “to not work sometimes”, training yourself to believe that done is good enough, and not being afraid to use sick days when you need them.

For me, the highlight was when she talks about the importance of “getting your head out of your navel” in the workplace. I’m going to quote her paragraph in entirety because I think that it is incredibly profound.

“We get way high on what we do in libraries, and libraries are way cool, but ten people being annoyed because I forgot to change a font colour is not the town mob that my anxiety is making it out to be. Sometimes, when I’m stressed out over a new project and feel like a fraud or whatever, I like to sit and imagine a world where no one did my job. Things would be worse, granted, but… the world would keep going. My university would keep going. My library would keep going. And that’s ultimately super friggin freeing. Because the worst case scenario is that someone does nothing, and even then nobody’s going to die or truly suffer for it. And even at my super depressed-est, even I have to acknowledge that I can totally do better than a non-existent person doing nothing.”

Keeping Our Own Time by Emily Drabinski

Emily Drabinski talks about her struggles with burnout and procrastination as an academic librarian and how getting tenure has alleviated this burnout. She is able to “write nothing! coast awhile!” because she has tenure, and now is able to focus on what is really important to her in the field of librarianship and the scholarly studies that she engages with in the field.

She concludes with advice to librarians who are struggling with burnout, which is also very applicable to library students who find themselves struggling to identify the meaning behind their hectic, fast-paced studies. “Find something inside the field that matters, and then do your best to set your watch by it.” Personally, this advice strikes a cord with me and reminds me why I am pushing myself to seek out topics of research and study within my courses that relate to my broader interests and the change that I want to see in the world. I am very lucky to have been able to do this in my courses this semester, and am optimistic that I will be able to keep this up throughout my time at SLAIS.

Mental Health Micro-Aggressions by Rebecca Ciota

Rebecca Ciota takes an unconventional approach to the #LISMentalHealth conversation – rather than focusing on the mental health of library professionals, she discusses the ways in which library employees can support patrons who have mental health disorders. Rebecca gives examples of insulting and ignorant comments that she has witnessed library employees say in reference to library patrons.

She concludes that:

“As we use #LISMentalHealthWeek to discuss our own mental health issues and share support, I hope we (the library community) can also try to renew our commitment to making libraries a safe space for everyone.  We should be aware of the things we say and do, and how that shapes a safe (or hostile) environments for our coworkers and patrons.”

I was late on the #LISMentalHealthWeek bandwagon, but luckily the January conversations can be found on Twitter by searching the two hashtags, and conversation continues to be ongoing. I highly encourage everyone to check out the hashtags and see this great example of how social media can be used within the library community to inspire others, build solidarity, and create change.