https://www.academia.edu/122320581/On_the_Writing_of_Mental_Health_Philosophy

Somewhere in an academic paper I read what I feel guides my contribution to the field of mental health. It suggested that references for any academic paper should be sufficient and sensible enough to guide the intelligent reader to a source –that’s it.

In my own process, I find challenge in all conventional guidelines, in particular, for attempting to get papers published in journals. In a very simple way for explanation, it is such a challenge for me that I had to ask myself what I am trying to accomplish in trying to get my paper published by whatever journal. My answer is that in the very specific task of submitting a paper to a journal I am trying to get people to acknowledge my intelligence and ability, and to gain some sort of notoriety. Nothing wrong with that, but the challenge arises because those reasons are not the main reason why I write. Mental health is not entirely about popularity or furthering an individual agenda, even as that might have a place. I write because I want to be engaged and I feel the knowledge and experience I have might help us in general but people specifically toward a better world. Yes, I am a dreamer.

Also, as any writer will tell you a writer should know: I had to ask myself who am I writing for? Here, I feel, is arrogance, pride, and a certain intolerance motivating me. Though often people will tell me my writing is way above their ability to understand, I am

not specifically writing for tenured academics nor intellectuals who enjoy arguing for argument’s sake over theoretical merits. My audience are those who are involved with mental health, but particularly those who see intelligence and theory as the application of practical circumstance. Not everyone is interested in this way, including journal editors; who could know? For sure my writing is intellectual and philosophical as it asks for, I surmise, a certain ability and desire to challenge oneself, but it is for professors, professionals, and laypeople alike. I myself read journal published papers, but I also find much valid and useful discussion in papers and books that have nothing to do with journals. Mental health philosophy spans the genres. It is not confined nor absolutely defined by accredited publications or the scientific community, even as it might use those vehicles. In truth, the editors boards of journals are just doing what they can; I imagine they want the best for anyone who wishes to publish things (yes, I am a dreamer).

Yet, another question that comes up is whether a specific journal format and protocol for getting published is really working toward the effort I value? Helping people and furthering knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a good statement of my intention
for writing. So, my answer here is yes and no. Yes, to the extent that there is simply
much too many people writing at all sorts of levels and calibers, with all sorts of topics
and agendas, trying to publish papers, that journal publishers must have a way to sort them; there is valid knowledge in journals even if the knowledge is, for a term, biased, and that I might have to alter my format (and standards) to accommodate the want for publicity. Then no, in the sense that only a particular kind of knowledge results from that process of sorting, and even an implied promotion that the sorting represents the only valid knowledge that exists, even with the best intentions. Again, see my work for a more thorough plummet into this kind of water.

Some of my challenge is indeed a want for validation. I do, at times, try to get a paper published in a journal and I do feel there is some value in the dissemination of knowledge through those channels. Nonetheless, I also find that the value of the information cannot be automatically equivalent the journal publication vehicle. As many people know, the ‘package’ does not necessarily denote quality, just as education and letters after one’s name (PhD, MA, PsyD, MD, and the like) does not necessarily denote a valid configuration of intelligence; in fact, one can argue that often enough the letters equate to pay grade and influence more than actual meaningful and constructive substance. The whole “pig with lipstick” meme is relevant here because the usual assumption is that because something has been published, say, in the journal Nature then it has necessarily quality information to pass on or bestow upon readers; just think Sokal Hoax if you want to get an idea of the process for what, as well, is actually happening in journals at this very moment. Notwithstanding human fallibility, I feel information relevant and significant for mental health often enough is inadvertently skewed, not always or wholesale, but often enough to be significant with that type of processual dissemination.

Overall, I feel at the heart of mental health something is missed in the necessary initial processes of sorting information. The sorting can be represented as a standardization of style, such as the APA, or the Chicago style. I mean this in the most simple way of having a paper rejected because I missed a period somewhere in the stylizations the journal requires, or because I didn’t cite enough current peer-reviewed material. Yet I cannot but wonder, even if the formatting style is met, if rejections are doled out simply because the editors and peer reviewers are not understanding the content. Then further, I cannot help but wonder if the status of people interferes in the comprehension of mental health, again, simply because the way the status was granted or achieved has created a particular kind of knowledge that is viewed, to thus be deemed, as valid.

See that I definitively do not mean this is a very generalized way. I do not mean there should not be gatekeepers or that the gatekeepers are necessarily wrong. As well, I do not mean that anyone who feels they have something to say and is writing it down in whatever way they are should be given equal consideration at all times. I do not mean to indicate the “marginalized voice” being excluded, nor do I mean to indicate the “colonizing presence” that silences voices. While these could have something to do with mental health, and for sure in the social domain, the use for recognizing that the struggles other people are having are due to our own presence in the world (and no matter in what form we show up) is not necessarily foundational. Mental health is inclusive in a way that these sure and justified social reductionary calls to action may not recognize. Being a white hetero, cis-gender male has its social ramifications, and can ethically call for certain types of behaviors depending on conditions, but that does not preclude the relevance of mental health to every human being.

…But that kind of discussion is for my papers.

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As a writer writing for all sorts of intelligent people to access and read, I try to ‘carve the middle’, so to speak. As anyone will see as they read my ideas on mental health philosophy, it is the work that holds importance, less the formatting and less whether or not specific kinds of peers have let it pass through a particular intellectual gauntlet.

As a Counselor at least some of my effort and practice is modeling for my client what it is to be a healthy human being. I seek to transfer this standard to my writing. I write in the assumption of a common mental health able to be informed by an intelligence innate to the person in their particular situation. So it is while I do use a certain standardized style, my referencing will meet the minimal requirement of sense to allow the reader, if they so choose, to be guided to the source.

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