Mental Health

In recent years mental health has become a hot topic in all walks of life, including ecology. This has been made even more prevalent by the issues relating to COVID-19, the national lockdown and rollout of the furlough scheme, which have left a lot of people feeling isolated and struggling mentally, for one reason or another.

The fact that mental health has become a subject that everyone is talking about is a good thing, and as a result the stigmas around it have reduced, making it easier to discuss your mental health. However, the stigmas haven’t gone away completely, and because of the way our society works they probably never will. There will always be those people that see speaking about mental health as a weakness, although with some irony, they are probably the people that have the greatest need to actually speak to someone.

Ecology

Ecology is an interesting profession when it comes to mental health. People seem to have a sugar-coated view of it and think that ecologist’s days are spent skipping around the fields in the sunshine or dancing around our kitchens singing songs while the woodland creatures make our lunch, like a scene from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

In reality ecology can be a difficult sector to work in. The work can be lonely and isolated, and some surveys require working at times of day that don’t lend themselves to good sleeping patterns or stable diets. Ecologists spend a lot of the time trudging around development sites in the grey and wet British weather, standing on sites watching people destroy everything natural in the name of ‘progress’ or staring at the sides of buildings at obscure times of day hoping that a bat emerges to relieve the boredom. We have to develop a thick skin, to deal with being shouted at, insulted and generally abused for telling people that they have habitats or species of importance on site that need further survey work or some form of mitigation. We also have to be ready to deal with a lot of travelling, very unsociable hours and night after night spent in drab hotels around the country.

In addition, we live in a world that is becoming more and more aware of the depletion of our natural environment, the loss of our species and the continued urbanisation of our natural landscapes but less and less willing to lose a little bit of profit to make a positive change.

And worst of all, and this probably isn’t confined to ecology, we have to deal with the more unscrupulous sides of our own profession. We go to sites and carry out surveys that identify a range of valuable habitats and protected species, only to have the client tell you that they’ve had a ‘second opinion’ from someone else, who surprisingly doesn’t identify anything of value and tells the client exactly what they want to hear.

Personal Experience

My personal experiences with working in ecology have been mixed, as I think most peoples will have to some degree. I always had a connection to nature when growing up but never intended to go into ecology as a career. I fell into ecology as a profession, almost by accident, when I agreed to help someone out who was struggling with workloads, twenty years later I am still working in ecology.

My career in ecology has provided me with many ups and downs, but after twenty year I still adore working in the field (well most of the time I do!). Without ecology my life would be very different because working in ecology has caused me to meet people that I wouldn’t have in my life if I had taken a different course. My career has also allowed me to travel all over the country working in some of the more beautiful areas of Britain and experiencing the natural world in all its glory.

As mentioned above, it’s not all up sides. Working in ecology and trying to stay up to date with an ever changing, and very competitive field, has meant that I have also lost contact with people that were important to me. Over the years I have struggled with the motivation to continue trying to change the minds of people who don’t care about the natural world if it stands in the way of profit. I have suffered fatigue from busy seasons that have ruined my sleeping habits and from endless travel on the gradually deteriorating British road network. I have questioned whether we actually make a difference or are fighting a losing battle and have ended up in hospital from stress, leaving me questioning whether it’s all really worth it in the long run.

After struggling for years I was persuaded, by someone important who could see how things were affecting me, to speak to someone about how I was feeling and to concentrate on myself, my goals and how I wanted to continue in the field. I won’t pretend it was an easy process, but it was one that was definitely worth it.

That leads me to the reason for writing this blog………

There are still stigmas around mental health and those stigmas make it difficult to be open about how you feel, which in turn makes it difficult to find the motivation to stand up for yourself or go for the goals that are important to you. I wanted to be open and honest about how I have felt because that might motivate someone else to do the same, and they might motivate someone else, which in turn will help to reduce the stigmas and give more people a chance. I don’t see myself as any sort of authority when it comes to mental health but I have learnt an important lesson, which forms the basis for the only advice I will try to give. That advice is to listen to people around you, they really do see things in you that you don’t see, and if you are struggling with anything, however minor it may seem, speak to someone, anyone.