I don't want happy pills to tolerate a shitty situation, i want the shitty situation to end. Therapy can't talk away the material conditions that cause my suffering. I want better coping mechanism and that's why i'm here but jesus does it feel like a friendship i pay for.
What do you think? Is it overprescribed as an answer? When deaths of despair rise it's always "we should fund more mental health institutions", yes then what? Does mental illness just drop from the sky? Does it emerge from your head fully formed? Do these talking points sound overly medicalist to anyone else?
I'm just so, so tired
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I don't have an answer to this specifically but you may find it interesting to know that after the October Revolution, the Soviet Union started conducting free psychiatric interviews with basically anyone who wanted one and many, many people reported that the overthrow of Tsarist oppression and the Communist Revolution had drastic positive effects on their mental health. People all over the country had a better outlook on life in general after being liberated from all the stressors of feudalism. I believe the same will happen with the overthrow of capitalism.
This sounds really interesting, if you have a source I’d love to read more...
they are in government archives in Russia and not very publicly available as far as I know
Therapy is just the commodification of "sympathy" when you get right down to it. Now many people have serious issues which need medical assistance, but a lot of people who go to therapy are simply looking for someone to vent to and a place where their feelings are valid. In a market system, you increasingly can only get that if you pay someone for it because the rich tapestry of relationships that you would have had under older systems is gone. People unloading on cashiers is the same shit.
This article went semi-viral in the social work world recently, so you're not alone.
This is a constant struggle within social work. There's value in helping people cope with a shitty situation, but that can't be all that mental health providers do or else it just becomes reinforcing societal oppression. This is something that social workers in particular have dropped the ball on, because both helping individuals cope and fighting to change oppressive systems is supposed to be our mandate, it's something that supposedly makes social work different from the other "helping professions", but for a variety of systemic reasons that's just stopped being what social workers do, outside of performative yearly "social work day at the capitol" type events.
That's how I feel about mental health services in general, but also how I feel about medication specifically. I'm medicated myself, and it helps me function. There is value in that. But it's much more valuable as part of a larger program to challenge oppression and change our material conditions than it is just as its own individual thing.
I think there's a dual reality - it's more of an answer to social problems than it should be, and less individually available than it should be. Mental illness is legitimate and addressing it can help people address their own material conditions, but the aggravating factors affecting it are also those material conditions as a whole.
I highly recommend the podcast It’s Not Just In Your Head. I haven’t listened in a while, but the early episodes at least deal with how the causes of so many mental health problems are systemic. It’s from two left-wing therapists. I don’t remember their exact positions, but it’s good.
I just haven’t listened in a while because I’m bad at listening to podcasts
Environment plays a huge part in mental health and any remotely good psychologist will agree with that.
Claiming mental health conditions happen only or primarily because of environment is really reductionist and close to ableism.
peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRIs)
SSRIs are not a cure the same way insulin is not cure for diabetes. That doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly helpful.
I think it's a mix. I'm definitely anxious because there's a chemical imbalance in my brain. Would a better society make me feel better than I do currently? Yes, of course. But I would probably still feel anxious, because I always feel anxious. I was anxious when I was 3 years old, before I learned there was anything bad in this world. To this day, I worry way too much about the fact that I'm going to die someday, and that's not something society can "fix." So meds help balance out the chemicals in my brain and take the edge off--which I actually really need. The same way glasses might let someone see.
meds help balance out the chemicals in my brain and take the edge off–which I actually really need. The same way glasses might let someone see.
I love this comparison.
:soviet-heart:
But I would probably still feel anxious, because I always feel anxious. I was anxious when I was 3 years old, before I learned there was anything bad in this world
Mood. I had severe panic attacks as early as 8 years old, and it wasn’t until I was 20 that I understood what they were. I had no reason to be anxious, my worries at the time were math homework I didn’t even struggle with and going outside with my brother to hit each other with sticks. You can implement fully automated luxury gay space communism and I’ll still have anxiety.
No, I don’t think it’s underestimated. Mental health is still heavily stigmatized. Therapy and medications are not a panacea (no healthcare is) and people thinking they might be probably sets unrealistic expectations.
Dismissal of mental health conditions like ADHD and ASD are almost always based in ableism too. Need to get more coffee, this might have come out irritated because I hear skepticism about this a lot in left leaning spaces and it gets old.
:meow-coffee:
Reading the body of your post and I’m sorry you’re feeling so down right now.
:soviet-heart:
there was a pretty popping quote the other day from rwandans eviscerating the western psychiatric praxis when they knew it to be useless after the genocide
That quote was from an article about psychologists working to better adapt healthcare for other cultures. Good read if you had the chance to.
When I smoked weed and it was illegal. I would constantly have anxiety about the cops. Picking it up, driving with it. Smoking it, being high and it’s in my house, neighbors calling the police. It all made me have high anxiety. But weed also can give you anxiety. So now that it’s legal, I still deal with some anxiety if I smoke too much, but it’s not about the state trying to put me in a box for using.
Similarly, those with mental health issues aren’t going to suddenly be without, but it will subside a lot of the issues. Especially when we meet everyone’s basic needs. You’ll have more time to tend to your mental health and not have a bunch of sessions focused around how society is making your mental that much worse.
The entire field is liberal and supports a liberal perspective of society.
It functions as a tool to manage many of the ills created by society itself. It never seeks to actually cure these ills, the only way to do that would be to change the material conditions and the only way to do that would be to challenge society. Its job is entirely to mitigate them.
It functions as a tool the mitigates the ills of capitalism to try and make it more bearable for some. To keep the workers working. It never seeks to truly change the source of the problems because to do so would turn it into a radical field.
This isn't a rejection of the fact that it saves some lives and makes life more bearable for some. Just a criticism that it doesn't go anywhere near as far as it truly should.
