I wonder whether we tackle poverty in the right way. We have seen that much poverty comes from a lack of education, a lack of good healthcare, a lack of strong relationships and is often cultural, stemming from ones upbringing. Some inherit poverty!
In his book All Blacks Don’t Cry, John Kirwan has got New Zealanders to see that Depression is a mental sickness. By doing so he has helped change the attitudes of those suffering from depression and the attitudes of others towards depressed people.
I suffer from tiredness. Unless one is labeled with something such as ME or MS, tiredness is seen by many as laziness, apathy or unwillingness to be relational. Tiredness is a form of depression and should therefore be seen as an illness.
I now wonder whether we should look at poverty in the same way. What would happen if we treat poverty as mental illness? By doing so, the steps to good health as outlined by JK could then be applied. We then start to focus on the person, not on the causes and symptoms of poverty.
I think too that singleness is a sign of poverty if only one where relationships are poor. But many single people are poor in other areas. Many single people do not have family and in my mind that makes them even poorer than ones with a family.
JK’s depression stemmed primarily from the need to perform and from not looking weak. Other people’s depression comes from a feeling of rejection, from a feeling of not being recognised or understood and from a feeling of being unloved. I think we should also treat ‘running away coping mechanisms’ such as drug, alcohol abuse, smoking and gambling as a form of depression. Depression leads to stress and suicidal thoughts.
I think we need to break the poor into two groups, namely those that are well-balanced and have a purpose in life, but are unable to break through because of poor education, poor health or poor relationships and those that are not. The latter are the ones that we should consider as being sick.
To overcome anything, one needs to change one’s attitude to it. To help the ‘sick-poor’ is to help them with changing their attitude to life.
Answering ‘How’ is where support organisations should focus.
To me, there are four core ways of helping the poor and the single:
Firstly we need to get the person to get in touch and identify with their feelings: do they feel rejected, unloved, unheard, unrecognised, stressed, depressed, angry, sad etc. We need also to get them acknowledge their fears: fear of loneliness, of failure, of not being good enough, of not being liked etc. In doing so we need them to identify where the feelings and the fears stemmed from and the lies associated with each.
Next we need to give them hope that comes from getting them to see the good in themselves and work on developing that core goodness. We need also to help them identify with their core personality, strengths and talents. Hope also comes from volunteering and we need to encourage them to do so.
Then we need to give them some tools by which they can move forward and we need to encourage them to take risks and explore new opportunities. Where necessary we should direct them to other help agencies and/or to further education and/or to an exercise regime such as swimming, gym, cycling etc.
Lastly we may need to give then some practical help such as providing transport, child care, house maintenance duties, cooking lessons, financial-budgeting etc.
We can only do this by being a friend and by providing a safe place from where they can open up and through then provision of a self-help course. Note, it’s only when the support person can be trusted that they will accept the help above. Trust may take time to develop.