Yves here. Richard Murphy raises important questions about rampant mental health disorders, but I wish he had been more pointed. Neoliberalism is bad for your health, physical and mental. We have been writing from the inception of this site that highly unequal societies inflict a lifespan cost, even on the richest. It is believed to be due to greater stratification resulting in high social costs if one falls from their current economic position. That’s before getting to bodyguards, snipers and safe rooms, now a staple among the squillionarie class, which are stressors even for those whose status otherwise seems secure.
Neoliberalism atomizes individuals by trying and often succeeding in putting work/employer demands over social and family needs. That includes the expectation that one will move to find a job, weakening community, as does the increasing number of slots with de facto “on call” demands. Lower labor bargaining power means that the consequences of being fired or a business closure are far more stressful and potentially seriously damaging than in the days when it was not hard to get hired.
I could go on, and I am sure readers can and will.
So yes, while undue attachment to electronic devices no doubt also plays a role, don’t kid yourself as to the main driver.
By Richard Murphy, part-time Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School, director of the Corporate Accountability Network, member of Finance for the Future LLP, and director of Tax Research LLP. Originally published at Fund the Future
The growth in mental ill-health is staggering. But might it be that those who are suffering are being entirely rational? In a world that is set up to fail them, aren’t they right to be stressed, anxious, depressed and afraid?
This is the audio version:
And this is the transcript:
Why do we have a mental health crisis in this country and, let’s be honest, around the world?
The FT ran a series on mental health in the week before Christmas and asked people why they thought there was such a crisis and the answer came back, “There’s too much social media.”
Talk about missing the point. That was spectacularly wrong.
And we do have a mental health crisis. The number of young people needing help for mental ill health has risen dramatically, maybe by 50 per cent, since the time of the Covid crisis.
The number of older people now likely to be suffering some form of mental ill health at any time is up to 1 in 4 of the population.
This is serious stuff.
Ten per cent or so of young people who should be in work, or education, or training aren’t at all because they can’t face any of those things. This is people dropping out of society because of mental ill health.
So what is going on here? I want to talk about something that I discussed with someone quite recently. We were talking about quite young children who have anxiety, and anxiety is a major problem amongst children, even in primary schools now.
And what would Wes Streeting’s answer to that be, we wondered? If he had a perfect world, what would Wes Streeting provide? He would put a counsellor in the primary school.
What would the counsellor do? They would sit with the child for an hour, and at the end of the hour the counsellor would say, “This child has an anxiety disorder.” So now they have a diagnosis. Except it isn’t a diagnosis at all, of course, is it? It’s a description. Nothing has changed because the counsellor has told the child they have anxiety. All they’ve given is a label to what the child already knew. They were frightened.
And at this point we have a choice to make, and I think this is really important. We either say the child shouldn’t be frightened of the world because the world is benevolent, or we look at the world and say the child should be frightened of the world because it is malevolent. And I really do think that the choice might now be as binary as that.
And I’m going to go for the choice which neoliberal economics would tell me I should make, and that is, I should assume that the child is rational. Because remember, neoliberal economics assumes that everyone is rational.
And if the child who is frightened of the world is rational, and their fear is well placed, then it must imply that the world that they can see in which they live, their parents and carers, and the people that they know live, is malevolent. It is out to harm them.
And they’re right. Let’s be clear. The evidence stacks up with this.
Twenty-five per cent of children in the UK live in poverty.
Far too many of them live in absolute poverty.
The children see their parents going without meals so that the child may be fed.
They know that they’re living in temporary accommodation and whatever school they’re at at the moment and whatever friends they’ve got right now may not be the friends that they will have soon because they’ll have been moved on yet again.
They know that their parents can’t get work.
They know that their parents are struggling to pay the bills.
And it’s obvious that the stress of providing that child with a Christmas present is enormous. and will rebound sometime in the new year when the debt arrives that was used to pay for it.
The child is not crazy when it thinks that there’s something wrong. The child is entirely right to think that there is something wrong. What is wrong, is the world in which we live. The world which denies that this is a possible outcome from neoliberal economics that says if only we can perfect the allocation of resources by overcoming the imperfections that the person has or their lack of training or skills or whatever else it might be – including the fact that they’re an introvert, or that they’ve got ADHD or autism or whatever is the reason for the prejudice against them that society has stacked in their favour, including the fact that they too were born of parents in poverty – whatever neoliberalism says about that is wrong. Because neoliberalism cannot provide a perfect allocation of resources. Neoliberalism is designed by and supported by people who perpetuate a myth that the wealthy are virtuous and theirs shall be the reward. Everybody else can go by the wayside.
The child, with anxiety, has worked that out. Okay, not in the way I’ve just presented it perhaps, but in the way in which it impacts on them.
So, what is the point? Do we try to persuade this child, either through therapy or through giving them drugs, that they, the square peg, have to fit into the round hole that neoliberalism has ordained for them, which is probably a pretty rubbish job?
Or instead, why shouldn’t that child be allowed to be who they are?
Why shouldn’t their parent be supported to provide for that child in the way that they know they could if only the opportunity was available?
Why can’t the resources that the wealthy command – but do not use – be made available to those who need them because they literally are in need?
This is the real cause of the crisis in mental health. Mental health – ill health that is, because mental health is a great thing by the way, we all want that – it’s mental ill health that is the problem – mental ill health is not something that is appearing because of social media.
It’s not something that’s appearing because we now live in a more lonely society.
The reason for our mental ill health crisis is that people are quite reasonably living in fear. And that fear is of a future where they know they aren’t wanted. And that fear is created by the neoliberal myth that says only the wealthy count.
Listen to the child who’s got anxiety syndrome. They know what is going on.
Deal with their problem by removing their causes for fear. Then we might have a better world.
OK I’ll bite. I am mentally ill. I have co-authored the globally renowned textbook in a field of surveying that seeks to “democratise” the methods and eliminate the tendency toward “centralisation of information and control” (like the early Christian church did with Latin etc). Yet I am royally effed up. And believe me it doesn’t take a statement here on NC to make me un-employable. I, together with my line manager, made formal complaints in Australian academia which automatically invoked their “two strikes and you’re out” stuff against the guy who started as my mentor and became my tormentor. A friend told me that the whole “movie stuff” happened with all employees being separated and the offender ending up with being ejected from the building with his stuff in a cardboard box.
It’s pretty irrelevant now because he, and our co-author, both giants in their field but old, died during the worst of the pandemic. I now “live” as a carer and pop up online when my brain allows. Any Brits who remember Gavin Esler from his time as BBC correspondent to Washington might like to look him up – he is very active and engages with me and others.
Lots of folk hate academia because of “lack of critical faculties”. These are often put under the silly umbrella of “woke”. Wrong reason. But right criticism. The stuff I published and which pays me approx $100 p.a. (to pretty much cover the cost of my accountant to do my tax return to HMRC) is anathema to wider academia. Why? Because I made the huge mistake of not conforming: I didn’t seek to make choice modelling a “more centralised religion”. I deigned to write a book telling the moderately statistically inclined person how to understand stuff. And it ruined me. Lesson learnt, though not one that Yves, Lambert et al would want to be the norm. I still struggle with the aftermath.
Is this the book you are referring to?
Yes
Yep. Bang on.
But the causes for fear very likely won’t go away — too profitable for the oligarch class —, at least not soon.
So we can expect more and more “Jokers”… and not of the burgundy sweater variety.
I laughed hollowly when that film came out……most of its supporters didn’t understand it. The only thing to look forward to is the Luigi trial….. and I wish Norm Macdonald was still with us
There’s a huge literature already in place (e.g., Bruce Levine, A Profession without Reason; Carl Ratner, Neoliberal Psychology) discussing this in detail. It’s been around since even before Thomas Szasz’s (1960) contributions.
Whatever happened to the Partnership For A Drug-free America?
This is your brain on drugs:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GOnENVylxPI&pp=ygUbVGhpcyBpcyB5b3VyIGJyYWluIG9uIGRydWdz
One study reported here at NC a few months ago said that pharmaceutical use of Methamphetamine for ADHD caused 1 out 660 patients to be hospitalized for psychosis. It downplayed the seriousness of this result by saying that they were all released within six days, without explaining that insurance will only pay for six days. I know this because one of my sons is a devotee of meth, has been involuntarily committed three times, and always gets out on day six just as delusional as ever.
Another anecdote I know of personally involves a remarkably good looking woman who has been living outside a community center in Virginia for weeks, and refusing transportation to a shelter except on the coldest nights. Somebody let her use a cell phone to call her rich family, They had had no ideas where she was. A brother-in-law came to take her to New Jersey but she refused. He told us that she had become psychotic after being treated for anorexia, then lived in a shelter for five years.
Chemicals can damage the brain, including FDA approved drugs. This possibility is widely ignored, it seems to me.
To your last paragraph, I think you’re right. For example, it seems that SSRIs can cause agitation, violence, mania, or psychosis in some people and some psych MDs won’t prescribe them without screening for prior mania. But such screening can’t be 100% reliable and might be skipped.
Please don’t construct an argument on anecdotes. Amphetamine derivatives have been the subject of mental health research since the 1960s. The “mother of all anti depressants” (tranylcypromine) was for decades thought to produce Amphetamine metabolites.
The jury is still out as to whether it’s “Amphetamine adjacent “. The whole argument regarding ADHD is full of stuff that is puzzling. Why does a stimulant resolve this? Etc.
Just as clarification for those who recall my past posts…..
I’m not inherently against anecdotes…..I just want multiple weird examples, I.e. Anecdata! Preferably with a realistic theory for the observations. Weird cases are often what drives science forward
I cited a study that was reported here. One out of six-hundred sixty became psychotic. What is your answer to that?
You sure it was one out of six hundred and sixty six?
Yes, 660. There were two different large groups in the paper, n = about 230,00 and n = about 330,000, involving only people with no history of psychosis. I was very surprised at the result and read the paper carefully.
“The Sane Society” was written by Erich Fromm in 1955, and much of its content is still relevant.
If the mental health problems of the 20th century persist into the 21st century then newer mental health issues might be around for a long time.
Thanks for this brief mention. Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, Erik Erikson, James Bugental, Rollo May, Viktor Frankl, and other humanistic psychologists were the guiding lights of my education in psychology. Still have their books on my shelves. Each was a theorist and practitioner of individual psychology and an analyst of society. If they receive a mention in current grad programs in psych, it is usually to point out their irrelevance to current practice.
Similarly, Richard Murphy, a prof of accounting practice, now analyses our mental health crisis. Curious.
Reading Viktor Frankl was my salvation when I was a teenager seriously contemplating suicide. I found his work on my own, not as part of any classroom teaching. The only time I was taught about humanistic psychology was a few years later in a undergraduate religious studies class.
The rulers of nations dominated by neoliberal policies ought to adopt policies that would relieve the anxieties of children and adults alike, but since they are more likely to do the opposite, it’s up to the families of such children to struggle and find ways to help relieve anxiety and depression. The self-reported happiness of people in countries like India, Indonesia, and Mexico suggests that strong family bonds and religion can be positive in such efforts.
You have a point. For most of my life I detested the Christian religion (and I still do – along with the other ‘religions of the book’). However, I’m coming to see that it did, for all its stupidities, give an essential element of social cohesion, which has now dissolved. I still blame it for being an inherently illogical set of beliefs – if it had been more rational and believable, society might still have that element of cohesion. But also to blame for societies ills are the prevailing doctrines of ‘scientism’ and ‘scientific’ materialism, allied with ‘liberalism’ and ‘monetarism’ which have sacrificed ‘irrational'[?] humanism and spirituality and the long term interests of the many, for the short term interests of the rich/few. (I am aware that there is a seeming contradiction between my promotion of ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ here, but I’d need a book . . . )
Fear has been my constant companion for my entire life. Not anxiety, but fear. Anxiety seems rather elitist to me as in “I’m anxious that my stock portfolio is underperforming this quarter” or some such thing that is above my pay grade since I’ve never owned any stocks.
Fear is primal. Will I have food to eat? Safe water to drink? A place to live? Will I have adequate clothing to wear? Will I be cold? If I am sick, will I receive treatment? Will those entrusted to care for me on a daily basis (when young at least, this would usually be family) hurt me instead? Do I have anywhere to go for help or to hide? Will anyone be there to assist or comfort me? Too often, the answer is no.
The author of this article is correct. Fear, based in reality, is the cause of most of our mental health problems. A good and moral society would care for all its people by providing them with the basic necessities of life and real opportunities to thrive. A chance for some happiness! But here in the US, we are failing miserably. No wonder we are in despair.
Sidenote: I find it interesting that The Adjuster comes from such a wealthy family. Perhaps his extreme back pain was his first real experience with life’s unfairness. Many of us have known unfairness all our lives.
Yves put it in a nutshell. But let me offer another approach. In historical terms we are living in a culture, particularly in the West but also in other parts of the world, of radical change and uncertainty. Traditional values are gone as governing principles of society. The role of women, the issue of sexual identity, the mythological frameworks that, in fact, help people remain sane because human beings need meaning in their lives beyond their own personal life. The mainstream narrative in the USA is filled with lies and deception–who can you believe? This lack of trust creates mental anguish particularly for people who are sensitive and could, if they weren’t so stressed, offer guidance rather than trying to hide from the endless flow of information that is mainly false. I see people taking shelter in all kinds of ways particularly with elaborate fantasies of global plots to turn us all into zombies or kill us. I’ve talked to several people who are smart who actually believe that. Mind you, I do believe we are facing all kinds of conspiracies (having worked in gov’t, I’ve seen conspiracies of all kinds often at cross-purposes).
We have to appreciate what we are dealing with today and find the silver lining of all this craziness. I believe we are in the midst of a profound change in human culture at the level of the discovery of fire, agriculture, and beyond the changes we went through in the industrial revolution. This disorder exists as an opportunity to expand our consciousness and the meaning of life and the nature of reality. Our mental health problems are the necessary growing pains and the necessity of alternate forms of consciousness to painfully emerge to find a more profound basis of morality and social relations. We have to understand that, for starters, we need to take heed of what Yves said in her intro and move on from there. We, scientifically, know what makes people happy and healthy–let’s start going in that direction (check out the findings of “happiness studies” in the social science discipline).
You had me right up to mention of happiness studies.
I’ll quote the most damning scientific criticism: happiness scores are not even wrong. I’m on record (YouTube) with the critiques
Happiness studies show that people are happier when they help others rather than the current cultural requirement of selfish materialism. I’ve been around for awhile and it meets my experience–and or, life for a “higher” purpose, i.e., meaning.
Yes. ‘Meaning’ is the key to everything. The problem is – do we have an afterlife or not? There is no irrefutable proof, only indications and supposition. But without one there is no possible ‘meaning’. (Sorry if this is straying too far from the original topic).
I like the way you’ve framed this as a no-pain-no-gain passage for humanity.
I don’t think it’s the case that the decline of religion in the West has left a vacuum in its place. Everyone has a worldview, a faith of sorts that things do or ought to work a certain way. A judging, omniscient god who separates sheep and goats onto the road to Happytown or the Highway to Hell has been replaced by the conviction that we’re all playing a game with only one Rule–the one who dies with the most toys wins. This happens to coincide with intensifying inequality and a deteriorating biosphere that make acquiring those toys more and more difficult. Since almost no one seems to be willing to wait for pie in the sky these days, that could lead to things getting ugly.
The Old World has not passed away yet. That pain must first be survived before the pain of finding/falling into a new worldview.
I think about a little differently about pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye–that’s not my view of Heaven. Like mystics throughout the centuries I believe Heaven and Hell are “real” in the sense of them being immanent right now right here. We can choose Heaven and Hell as we live our life. The only way we move away from radical materialism is through opening our consciousness to the spiritual life which for me means experiencing the authentic Self beyond conditioning. This is not speculation on my part but a result of direct experience.
Cortisol mining, a new growth opportunity in this new era. Discover, or fabricate, some use for it, then induce production, siphon off what you can for resale or whatever. Sounds like adrenochrome. /s
I was going to mention the increased cortisol levels associated with the kind of stress which accompanies the mental states described here, but as a causal factor in the contemporaneous obesity crisis, especially among poorer people.
I think that the question is why there is so much mental illness these days but why is there not much more. I have been convinced for decades now that we live in what could be called ‘sick’ societies. Look, a functional person should be able to take in information, assess it and then make decisions based on the assessment of that original information. But how do you do that when not only the government but the main stream media constantly and daily gaslights you. You want examples? ‘It’s not a genocide when Israel does it. Your job comes before your family. Al-Qaeda is our friend in Syria. If you cannot secure a high-paying job and buy a great house in the suburbs, then the fault must be yours. The economy is going gangbusters right now.’ At a certain point there is trouble when what a person is told to believe and what they experience leads to a mental incongruity in their mind. They cannot reconcile the two beliefs. To do so would mean reassessing their entire belief-set and most people are not willing to do so. It is too painful mentally. So they continue to suffer until things start to break down for them personally.
“a functional person should be able to take in information, assess it and then make decisions based on the assessment of that original information”
Humans seem to have evolved to make decisions in social groups, processing information through a combination of direct experience, dialogue, cultural memory, and shared belief systems that were not at all analytical in nature. Honestly, it is amazing that individuals can process information as well as they can, which is not very well.
I’d assumed, bourgeois kids made up version of white-flight suburbanite PMC angst was exaggerated? Szasz, Laing & Heller writing about substance-abusing, brain-damaged NPD/BPD stereotypes, to epitomize a tiny, inbred cabal of psychopaths who’s esteem issues were isolated into… government, religion, industry & academia (we took MICIMATT for granted, genocide was their profession?) Suddenly, our classmates were in charge! After Sputnik, we’d been forced into contact with burgeoning yuppies; who’d co-opted: Environmental, race, gender, economic, food, pacifism & awareness, itself into commodities; for sale on TV, mall, then “our” Internet. Our dropping-out of petit-bourgeois reality, went unnoticed by us. We’d never really bought into our betters’ perspective & saw it as a sane person would view ED & obesity ads on WeTV at 3:30AM. I believe our term was, “straight people?” Denigrating, yet another generation of cartel Capitalists victims, for rejecting their genocidal insanity & authoritarian kleptocracy as lifestyle is getting old?
I think the answer to that rests in our not fully fallen nature. As biologicals, with imprints formed in the depths of time, we maintain hidden wells of empathy and we are able to associate with other human beings.
The Socialist states and the Gulag Archipelago and likely Pol Pot’s camps were constantly re-adjusted by this ingrained capacity for empathy, especiallly when away from earshot or eyesight of the invigilators. There was a TED talk with an American Korean (woman) I think that experienced imprisonment in North Korea, and all her talk wasn’t about her suffering and her experiences, but on the fact that even in those circumstances human connections were still formed, genuine ones.
Similarly, the faith that the neoliberals and semi-autistic Silicon Valley Tech Bros have in store for us will always be continuously sabotaged by our very deep imprinting as biologicals (you see the pride of lions tending and moving from harm’s way an injured fox – this is powerful stuff).
Interesting about the woman’s experience in the North Korean prison camp. I am not familiar with her TED talk but I wonder if genuine helpful connections are more common in cases of extreme suffering such as political imprisonment or war. When mass suffering occurs, social barriers between different status groups tend to dissolve. Helping a fellow prisoner or victim of war makes sense since at some level each person knows they could be next and in need of help. Does a wealthy person in ordinary circumstances even consider at a subconscious level that he or she might someday need the help of a poor person in order to survive and is thus motivated to help such a person? Perhaps they assist through philanthropy but that only goes so far in the best cases.
Experiences of prisoners from the English-speaking world in Japanese camps during WWII seem to show that mutual help depends crucially on the kind of society in which people have been socialized.
Given the same circumstances (same camps, etc), Australians fared the best, because of a general matey solidarity. British fared distinctly worse, because of strong class-based and national (English, Scottish, etc) differences. Prisoners from the sheer individualistic USA fared the worst.
I am not sure people from the thoroughly neo-liberalized, socially fragmented, egoistically minded Western countries would have much chances in such extreme situations where solidarity is a matter of survival.
Thank you for that information. Quite fascinating to learn about differences in the English- speaking world. Good for the Aussies that they maintained their solidarity.
I had several relatives who served in the South Pacific during the war. One met and married a girl in Australia and lived there the rest of his life. He never regretted it.
Sites like NC provide great value to people like me, who as a result no longer see their station in life as purely a result of personal choices, but in the context of a system that often actively works against the interests of the many so the few benefit.
Nothing to fear but fear itself? Maybe it has something to do with our increasingly secular age where the psychological and social prop of religion has been pulled out from under us. Which is to say that however one feels about “faith” as a guiding principle, the reason religion has always held human sway goes beyond accusations that it’s all about social control. Existential questions can get in the way of the important business of living and helping others to live.
It would be nice to think the world is a rational place but too much thinking can get in the way of living and lead to cowering. “To be or not to be” is not the question. We are. Get on with it.
I am kinda on board in that I welcome the demise of organised religion but am OK with individual stuff which may be secular or “fuzzy”.
Much of my research was “accept and get on with it” :)
I couldn’t find a version with English subtitles, they seem to have dissapeared from the youtubes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbMinfmC3E0
While sociopaths are all purrring and oohing and aahhing at Fountainhead, the normies will get misty eyes (believers or not) at such collectivist expresions, be they faith related or not.
It is interesting that in many cities there’s a therapist/psychiatrist shortage. It can be really hard to get one, most I’ve spoken to have long wait lists, this for a job that pays above the median, and seems like something a lot of people would want to do.
And then it’s hard to find a good one. Many, in the experience of someone I know psychiatric nurse practitioners, behave like bots. No matter what your symptoms, they want to start you on Prozac/Zoloft. But there are not remotely demonstrated to be universal aids.
Neoliberalism also affects those who provide & those who receive therapy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198332459-bad-therapy
Best…H
a good book on this topic is Testojunkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in The Pharmacopornographic Era by Paul Preciado.
the body is a bit of a mess. it’s somewhat hard to control. as we make society increasingly comprehendable, it seems more possible to control the human body. like, we understand enough chemistry to control the positions of the atoms now. it’s applying that same technological fervor to the human body – people want to control it. but (from focault) in order to control the body, you have to define it and break it into commodifiable parts. diagnoses like ‘anxiety’ or ‘adhd’ turn the complicated human experience into something that can be ‘controlled’ through levers like therapy or medication. and then that ties into the pharmacy industry and turning the human body into a consumable object. something that you can sell things to as well as something that can be sold. adderall helps you sit still at your desk and do your knowledge work.
i think another interesting point is the idea of optimizing the body for labor. or simply to get the most use value out of it. this also ties into self help, self optimization, and gym culture. part of that is genuinely healthy and good, but there are a lot of people who take it to weird extremes. think the tech guys trying to live forever by taking a lot of pills. (it’s sooooo hubristic to think you can control the human body like that. lol.) the sheer concept of gym rats or clean girls or, my favorite, the super elaborate beauty routines. optimizing the body to be a more consumable object, be it through labor or more psychosexual ways.
another problem is just the lack of any moral basis. overidentification with nihilism and moral relativism. the screens make this worse. you’re exposed to a deluge of all these opinions and it makes it hard to know what is real. spending your time obsessing over wars in a foreign land instead of issues in front of you. spending all your time in the realm of symbols instead of the material realm. i swear it does some really weird things to the brain. especially when exacerbated by all the bells and whistles of the addictive internet. there are so many opinions and its hard to sift through them. it’s a lot easier to follow some preordained pathway instead of decision anxiety where everyone says something different and you dont know what you believe. but we’ve lost a lot of the traditions that make decisions easier. this is why i remain catholic despite it all, because it’s easier to go ‘these are my morals’ than flounder around looking for someone to tell me what meaning is.
anyhoo. i think there are some real solutions in community and more ‘holistic’ approaches. if you are mentally stressed you are pushed towards purchasing drugs or services instead of just having friends you can talk to about your feelings. western society is highly individualistic, so problems are solved not by relying on others, but by having enough money to pay someone to do the task for you. i think a big part of the solution is increasing community ties. but that is another complicated question. how do you encourage something like community? i maintain it’s by creating structures that encourage social interaction and community building. the catholic church has done that quite well throughout history. meanwhile, the way we build our streets is anathama to social interaction. massive houses widely separated, commuting in the isolated bubbles that are cars where you don’t get to interact with other people, the sheer concept of doordashing instead of going somewhere and interacting with others. ‘third place theory’ is a bit of a beaten dead horse to me right now. but i think it’s correct. unfortunately it’s a lot easier to brainrot in bed than it is to go outside and say hi to your neighbors.
i have a LOT of critiques of psychiatry. spent a lot of time in the psych system as a kid and it made me worse. so i have spent basically all my life reading up on critiques of pscyhiatry. i have so many thoughts and opinions. so sorry for the essay in the comments.
I work in public health and I am faced with a lot of talk about community. When I asked about defining said communities, including geographically, I encounter a wall of blank stares.
Similarly when I asked what does de-colonising actually entails or de-colonising data actually means, in concrete, practical terms. Blank stares.
yeah, ‘community’ and ‘de-colonization’ are often used as useless buzzwords. and it is annoying when that happens. especially ‘de-colonization.’ but i think david graeber did a pretty good job of defining community in Debt. its like, a group of people who interact with each other regularly and provide mutual aid. (and not mutual aid in the vague buzzword way either. favors given without any form of tracking system. no monetary exchange. just the promise and trust that it will be repaid.) and regular interaction between a group of people and mutual aid can be tracked, encouraged, and have real material effects.
de-colonization is kind of a joke though. in the united states where i live at least.
Neoliberalism is the universal solvent which dissolves all community goods.
Thanks for the article and the various comments. I have personally suffered from a serious mental disorder since March 1, 1985. I had a single episode major depression thanks to one of Yves favs, Hank Greenberg, just because I became one of his fraud victims. He ruined my stellar reputation over a fire claim that at that time was a major claim that was insured by one of his 100 + companies. the claim was in excess of $700,000 and he ended up paying me about $500,000. But, he spent over a $million defending a 7 week trial which I prevailed. Greenberg is a very bad actor and does not pull any punches but I have lived with the mental disorder for over 39 years now. This incident is a case of neoliberalism run amok.
Surprised I haven’t seen at least one reference to this:
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.- Jiddu Krishnamurti.
I’ve never understood why people think suicide is irrational. It seems to me to be a totally rational response to an impossible situation. I also think that delayed suicide, i.e. not having children because you don’t want to inflict the impossible situation on them, explains why the native populations of the West are shrinking. One might be materially richer than one’s grandparents, but they had a network of other people on who they could rely, from whom they could borrow what they lacked. Not much point in investing in helping out your neighbor if your next job may be in another state. The only response the neoliberals have is to import people with a different culture from abroad. Hence the H1b kerfuffle.
It’s ironic. Moses came down from his mountain and found the people worshiping Mammon instead of God. The pressing issue of our time? People worshiping Mammon, wanting to create a homogenized “global market of consumers”, instead of caring about humanity and the wealth different cultures bring to us. Instead of seeing the beauty of the forest, our leaders see acres of timber and the profits they can extract, to buy themselves an expensive watch, a yacht, or a live doll. Different time, same baloney.
People are in more emotional distress because they are in societies that are out of control, certainly that they individually have no ability to influence, and because those societies increasingly have no use for them and no place for them. Is that what’s meant by a mental health crisis? Sometimes the whole mental health field seems like the police and “justice” system to me. Want more crimes? Pass more laws. Want more “mentally ill” people? Add new diagnoses and expand the range of attributes that qualify one for the existing diagnoses. Most of the diagnoses amount to “social adjustment problems” and “socially unacceptable behavior problems”. That doesn’t mean there are no people with organic brain diseases or “disordered thinking” brought on by drugs or other environmental chemicals. But it means that more people are getting lumped into that category because problems of social adjustment are causing emotional distress, and the people feeling this distress are accepting the psychiatric or psychological diagnoses given to them because that way promises some relief, the same way people accept that they are possessed by an evil spirit because the tribal witch doctor is said to be able to provide relief from that.
There’s a wide variation in people’s personalities and the resources they bring to bear on life’s challenges. And, without question, life sucks a lot of the time (especially given the unique cruelty of humans among all species), so emotional distress is unavoidable at times. Some people are more even-tempered and resilient in their response, some are more reactive and up-and-down in their ability to handle things, some are more easily hurt and discouraged by the misfortunes they encounter. Maybe some of the variation comes from genes, some from epigenetic causes, some may derive from early upbringing, but knowing which barn door was left open (as much psychology seems to obsess about) is no use to the person who sees their horse headed for the next county. Getting some kind of social and emotional support is what you would hope for in a sane society, where a fairly wide range of personality types and behaviors would be tolerated. In neoliberal society, where maximizing shareholder profit is the highest (if not the only) goal, the Krishnamurti quote above is the best summary of what you get. Being well-adjusted to a depraved and unbalanced social order doesn’t make you mentally “well”, it just makes you of use till they finally tell you to go die.
One would have to define what is ‘mentally sound’. A country that has wrought so much destruction upon the world should not only have its attack-capabilities stripped militarily, but also in terms of being any sort of authority on mental or spiritual well-being, it must have a diminished position at the table.
A few instant quotes jump to mind, that of Jung’s ‘western psychology is still in its diapers…’ and Krishnamurti’s adage familiar to all, to be adjusted to a sick society is no indication of health.
I appreciate that your site hammers on this with repeated recent articles. I returned from 8 years abroad only to find that not only were there striations of fear against travel to ‘vampire countries’ – Armenia, Uzbekistan, etc, in their estimation – there was demonization of so many aspects of being human that…ugh. I worked with HHS, who was utterly inefficient, saw the graft on state and federal levels, and then finally the Sanders office for a few months before we all reached the conclusion that, in my case, the best solution would be to get the hell back out.
So now I write you from places far away from my native Iowan birthplace, and rejoin the human race, the old world ‘alchemy of commerce’, do the best I can in negotiation for the least, tho it may only help a few. It was apparent to all that in America, there are just too many damn problems to tackle at once. A nearly completely anti-human country.
I can’t speak from personal experience about mental health issues and state response to them however I had alcohol and drug issues as a young person in the early 70’s here in California. As a patient in state hospitals (long beach general and napa) there were excellent programs with group therapy, good food, etc. the people in the drug and alcohol programs had a sort of status over (our term) the crazies but because we were allowed to roamt the buildings and grounds we saw they had good treatment and living conditions as well.
there’s some disagreement as to whether Reagan closed most of the facilities down in Calif during his governorship – which is a common belief – or his repeal of Carter’s mental health bill caused the programs to be shut down, but we all noticed a marked increase of people on the streets in downtown LA in the 80’s.
point being, there was never a huge amount of the state budget spent on housing/caring for folks with mental health issues just like there was never a huge amount spent on AFDC (welfare queens, as Reagan apparently called recipients). same as education, none have lobbies throwing huge amounts of $ at elected officials making them an easy target for cost cutting.
If there were a concerted effort made to address this issue it would not require huge amounts of $ in comparison to the waste given to militarized police, for example.
An acquaintance once suggested that a capitalist would sell plutonium laced mother’s milk if it were profitable. It should be obvious that our US society is not interested in promoting the health and welfare of the citizens of this country at the expense of profit making. The mental health symptoms are visible everywhere: suicide rates, mass murders, obesity levels, and even in foreign policy actions that support war criminals and terorists, etc. In general, advertising exploits the carrot and stick approach in marketing: Buy this and one will be more prestigous , more beautiful, more wanted. Don’t buy and, suffer. Insecuities, low self esteem, fears, a desire to have control are appealed to everywhere and at all levels. Problems arise when expectations aren’t realized. Smart phones and the internet really don’t empower everyone. Even celebrities have problems. This cauldron is then stopped up with top down propaganda that instills compliance, obiedience, and confomity to the ‘issued norms”. The result: for most a muted silence and then, on occasion, an explosion of violence. The danger of this situation was evident in the last election in which an “unruly and fustrated’ mob lookied for leadership whether or not that leadership provided a moral compass.
THX 138 i think was the film pointing to where we are going under free trade economics called neo-liberalism.
the powers that be are trying to drug, incarcerate, kill away the results of their policies.
scenario’s like judge dred and the minority report are already playing out across the western neo-liberal world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR56oD0PuCc
the feverish who implement these policies, have near, or almost total immunity, and if you can mange to pierce that shield, they are insured and legal representation provided by the tax payers, against any fall out on them.
to get rid of crank ideologies like free trade economics, the feverish cranks with their death grip on our throats means a almost total, or total destruction of our society, that feverish grip is that tight.
(Apologies to Rev Kev since he brought this quote up in Links today.)
For our society/nation/ethos, this:
is not compatible with this:
One of these is from our Declaration of Independence, and the other is considered the second of the seven deadly sins by Christianity.
Can anyone really wonder why having a society that embraces neoliberalism as a governing philosophy is committing societal suicide?
We may be dealing with a causal daisy chain going back forever. Our minds seem to construct the world we live in and the contribution of modern psychology and neuroscience has shown how, before our minds can create the world, the world creates our minds.
Nothing can be done about the world that created our minds over which we had little choice and probably instilled in all of us limiting, harmful, untrue beliefs about ourselves and others.
For the past year I have been meeting (twice a month) with a group of 8 guys (ages 35 to 83, from working class to a former important mass media player, and from grade-school drop-out to to Phd.
One thing we all have in common is the experience of emotional abandonment in childhood along a spectrum running from literally being placed in a foster home to the absence of needed parental love and nurturance.
The act of speaking honestly with others about such a vulnerability is really cool and a big-time learning experience.
Absence of connection is right up there with the experience of neoliberalism.
Traditional societies tended to build their social structures around “just so” stories that created a cultural framework for success. In recent centuries science has shown those “just so” stories to just be stories, and that has caused problems. Today it is possible to read those “just so” stories as metaphors, and to learn their lessons, without believing them literally. That also leaves us room to understand them flexibly to make them fit more comfortably our basic biological psychology.
We live in a world where conservatives grasp at literalism to save the “just so” stories, while liberals tend to liberate the stories to undergird new understandings. Unfortunately, the rich and powerful exaggerate these processes and turn them into the “wedge” issues that so divide our society today. So we end up with both religion and science caught in a whirlwind of propaganda. So women are dying of problem pregnancies because politics has widely banned abortion. Previously invisible sexual minorities have become political footballs. Common sense has been reduced to distorted propaganda.
There once was a term, “healthy skepticism.” We need to teach healthy skepticism to our children, and to ourselves. Reagan was not wrong when he said “trust and verify.” It sure beats “trust and obey.” A good place to begin is always “follow the money.” Even St. Paul knew that, “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” (1 Timothy 6:10) Power is an emergent property of money, and abuse is an emergent property of power.
Neoliberalism only offers rewards to the top of our society. Essentially we start our lives being told to be successful we must be in the top 10% of our class which means most are considered failures before they even start their working lives. What a warped world when we do not value the individual and what each and everyone of us can offer society. Smart phone usage does not help but only provides an escape from reality which exacerbates the problem.
Well, all I can add is that I lived through the latter half of the Cold War, a time when we knew that it could all end in a single afternoon. Civilization, certainly, and humanity quite possibly just gone. You could try to ignore it, but that fact was always at the periphery of our lives, ultimately inescapable, which was a huge burden on us all, but I don’t recall that our society was anywhere near as emotionally and mentally screwed as it is now.
we had those hide under your desk drills and the last Friday of the month at 10am they tested air raid sirens. the sirens always scared the hell out of me.
I’ll bite. When I’m not posting here about Peter Thiel, I work with trauma and PTSD sufferers and have done for about 20 years. I’ve noticed some themes over that time.
My long held view is that all (most?) of the external problems in our world are a manifestation of inner dysfunction, especially trauma.
Humans are social animals, designed to live in small groups with string trust relationships. We are not designed for the loneliness of the nuclear family, for the masses of unknown people we interact with daily, or for the dislocation of work/income/control of the means of production that capitalism has wrought.
Neoliberalism has chipped away at the non-neoliberal connections between us: community groups, shared endeavours, shared events are replaced by….soulless commoditized leisure and soulless, meaningless work.
I’ve lived in a bunch of countries and it’s clear that it’s worse in the US than the UK. The UK is worse than Germany. And all these white people countries lack the community and connection I experience living in SE Asia.
The further down the neoliberal road a country gets, the further from what’s healthy it’s people get. Isolation, depression, meaninglessness, inability to influence one’s situation, lack of voice increase. And unlike our tribal ancestors, we bear this pain alone, unsupported.
Furthermore, neoliberalism crowds out and denies other philosophies. Spirituality (whether religious or new age) is a human need. Neoliberalism has trumped religion in many place but offers no replacement cosmology with meaning. People lead empty, pointless lives of consumption, all the while masking their inner desolation.
But hey, at least it adds shareholder value!