Dyslexia & Me is a new campaign by Succeed With Dyslexia where we explore the narratives of dyslexic people when it comes to mental health, and finding out just what mental health can mean to the global dyslexia community in 2022. Today, we’re looking at some of the most common ways that dyslexia and living with dyslexia might have an impact on an individual’s mental health.
When Might Dyslexia First Have an Impact on Mental Health?
In 1937, writings by neurologist and pioneer in the study of dyslexia Samuel Orton highlighted the link between children who display signs of learning differences and instances of childhood anxiety and depression. In the year 2022, we’re nearly a century on from making the link between dyslexia and its possible effects on an individual’s mental health – but it’s still not explored in the global dyslexia community as much as is probably necessary to create an environment in which people feel wholly comfortable speaking about dyslexia’s effects on how they feel, as well as the effects it has on how they might read, write and speak.
In the foreword to Dr. Neil Alexander-Passe’s Dyslexia and Mental Health: Helping People Identify Destructive Behaviours, psychologistDr. Michael Ryan suggests that the struggles that many people with dyslexia and literacy differences encounter when learning to read may have a more powerful effect than we even realise. Reading is important in a developmental sense: not only is it the key that opens doorways to education, recreation and the ability to communicate with the world around us, it’s also in most people’s lives one of the first tasks we have to tackle without parental support and outside of the safety net of the home. He cites research by Eric Erickson on the idea of early childhood ‘failure’- in this case, a ‘failure’ to develop reading skills at the same rate as peers, or to establish a comfortable relationship with books and reading- could produce feelings of inferiority that last in the mind and have an impact on educational and emotional development.
You can find out more about Dr. Neil Alexander-Passe's work on dyslexia, mental health and why it's okay to fail in our upcoming episode of Dyslexia News- so make sure to keep an eye on our YouTube Channel!
There's more, too. Early relationships with reading are often interpersonal relationships by extension, owing to how they’re often sited within that multi-child school environment. And the act of being observed to have weaker reading skills by their peers might make some people with dyslexia feel embarrassed, ‘on the spot’ or singled out, especially if they’re undiagnosed, and especially if they’re made to feel inferior because of them by someone in their lives. Some may also begin to associate poor reading with sanctions too- weaker reading skills may lead somewhere along the line behavioural interventions such as missed recreation time or parental involvement if dyslexia isn’t identified as the root.
On a more long-term horizon, learners with dyslexia- especially undiagnosed or unsupported dyslexia- may begin to develop worries related to their career and life chances too, centered around exam results and their post-16 and post-18 destinations. We’ll explore this a little further below.
So it’s not too difficult to see where mental health conditions like anxiety might begin to take hold, as well as why early interventions and diagnosis are so important.
Everyday Life and Dyslexia
So some sites of difficulty that might lead to mental health struggles can be found in early childhood. But it’s wrong to suggest that instances of anxiety, stress and depression have sources in the same way that a broken bone is a source of pain, or tension is the source of a headache – some people experience mental health conditions like depression and anxiety without any external stimuli whatsoever, and some people with dyslexia never experience mental health concerns. However it does remain that depression and anxiety can have roots in the day-to-day experiences of everyday lives, or even specific memory sites that we find ourselves returning back to on top of those early effects- so this is important when we think about how optimised the world at large is for people with dyslexia outside of education, too.
Dyslexia can affect how we read, write and speak. Unfortunately, these are some of our most vital methods of communication, and it’s practically impossible in the modern world to go a day without having to read a road sign, answer a message, order from a barista, write an email – actions like this are the building blocks of our day to day lives. The frequency with which we complete these actions is insanely high, to the degree that for many of us we don’t even realise how often we’re doing them. But for somebody who has dyslexia or literacy differences, these actions are sometimes complicated by the effects of dyslexia, which can turn them from an unconscious constant to something all-encompassing; frustrating, alienating or even embarrassing to deal with on a constant basis. And it can even raise its head in how we spend our recreation time too: from online dating to finally getting round to that one book that everyone’s reading, dyslexia isn’t just a learning difference that’s confined to the classroom.
It may feel one thing to struggle with reading in class, but entirely another to come across something that people everywhere take for granted that causes you a problem. This may be something like a work spreadsheet, a list of directions, or even a messaging app – and it can further these feelings of stress, generalised anxiety, and long-term feelings of disenfranchisement.
Life, Low Literacy and Mental Health
Data indicates that literacy skills play an important part in an individual’s relationship with employability, work opportunities and the money they earn. These kinds of ‘knock-on’ effects of dyslexia and low literacy may also have an impact on somebody’s mental wellbeing, as they can interact with employment status, job satisfaction, living conditions and stability. Even younger people who are in education or training and haven’t hit the job market yet might feel anxiety related to these ideas, as some view struggling in school as part of a pipeline to lower-income jobs, and with the cost of living rising dramatically quarter on quarter, it’s enough to make many feel the impact of employment stress from well before the age of 18.
…All of which may have an impact on an individual’s mental health.
What's Dyslexia & Me All About?
These are just a handful of the ways that having dyslexia might have an impact on an individual’s mental health: from school work to communication to lived economics, they may be some of the more common ones, but it’s by no means an exhaustive list. There’s burnout, relationship stresses, PTSD, masking, workplace conversations, finding the right support, dealing with- even in 2022- a social stigma- the list can be essentially endless, as dyslexia really can have an impact on almost every aspect of somebody’s life.
We talk about co-occurring conditions a lot when it comes to dyslexia. ADHD/ADD, Autism, Dyscalculia, Dyspraxia, APD – we often mine into them and look closely at how they interact, and what can be done to support people. But we don’t look as closely at mental health and the co-occurring mental health conditions that can run alongside dyslexia too, probably because many of us still aren’t as open about our mental health as we are about our physical health. That’s what the Dyslexia & Me campaign is about: encouraging people to be more open about the connections between neurodiversity and their mental health, and turning the narrative back to the voices that have first-hand experience of them.
Dyslexia and mental health conditions are linked for many people. Although many believe that dyslexia can foster great creativity, hone a business brain and actually be beneficial to people in some pretty stellar high-end careers, the reality of it is it can also have a huge impact on our day-to-day, whether that’s learning, working, or just communicating. And for some people, feeling isolated and stressed either generally or in certain scenarios can lead into longer-term mental health worries, such as anxiety or depression.
Over the month of May, we’ll be looking more closely at the interplay between dyslexia and different aspects of mental health and wellbeing with the intention of bringing this narrative to the forefront and breaking down the barriers that make some of us less comfortable sharing about our mental health. You’ll hear videos from experts and people who have experienced it, blogs about the different ways in which we can look at mental health as a global community and support ourselves and those in need, webinars from those who make a difference in the dyslexia community every day, and so much more – so make sure to stay tuned to SWD this May.