Enter the Editorial Hivemind
Disclaimer: Some of the content in this issue deals with pretty heavy stuff. If you, or someone you know, needs help, we’ve put together a list of helplines to call on page 36. Kia kaha <3
“When we think of the term ‘mental health’, our minds tend to go to the extremities of poor mental health, as if mental health is inherently a bad, negative, scary thing.” - Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less
Mental illness is not something new to us in the Salient office. We think it’s important to move past the Aotearoa-wide taboo on expressing your emotions and be vulnerable with y’all. Both of us have got some diagnoses. We’ve been to therapy, we won’t lie. There have been office meltdowns, tear-seshes, and manic-hours a plenty. Not to deflect, but the Salient team think that having been through shit gives you an extra special spice—that if you’ve lived 100% happy (in writing this we’re realising actually that’s most likely impossible), you’re boring.
As Chloé Hayden writes, for some ridiculously odd reason, all of us perceive having ‘mental health’ as this horrible disease. The amount of time people (mostly cis men) said ‘oh I don’t have mental health’ to Fran back in her podcasting days still astonishes her. Like, bro, everyone has health, mental and physical. You wouldn’t say ‘oh I don’t have health’. Have you never experienced an emotion?
In 2003, Blam Blam Blam said “There is no depression in New Zealand” in an ironic way. That was 20 years ago and nothing has changed. Fucking wild.
We’ve heard people say that we have a mental health crisis over, and over, and over. We are no stranger to pulling friends out of a crisis and to the months-long wait times to get counselling appointments. Maia has had four therapists—only one has stuck. She went through bouts of two to four sessions at a time before realising anxiety was not a one-quick-fix problem. It’s a constant, daily battle. Having a regular therapist, and committing to looking after our brains, has been incremental to understanding our health.
The “Brain” issue aims to embrace vulnerability, and bring the different ways our brains function out of the shadows and into the light. As well as having focus on mental health, we take a deep dive into neurodivergence. Conditions that have been stigmatised in the past are now making leaps to being understood. As many of us enter university, we’ve begun to realise our brains fit into any number of neurodivergent conditions—getting a diagnosis, and having access to medication where needed, can be life-changing for a uni student. Access to these services has not caught up with demand, creating hurdles in the path to understanding one's brain.
In this issue, Seren writes about his synaesthesia—a state of perceiving where sensory pathways interact. Fran spills the intricacies of her brain, diving deep into how you can unknowingly be neurodivergent. Pippi talks to youth counsellors about the best way to help when you are a bystander to someone having a mental health crisis. Ethan unpacks the legislative barriers behind ADHD medication.
The Salient news team is back asking the hard questions. Ethan wants to know why there is an epidemic of falling streetlights. Niamh is wondering why course readers aren’t printed anymore, and why did the uni delete their Twitter? Zoë attends the 19 Fired Up Stilettos protest at Parliament, bringing strippers’ rights into the light. Seren covers the end of the Eating Disorders Genetics Initiative study and explains what the research hopes to achieve.
xoxo Maia and Fran
Salient is fuelled by Flight Coffee.