It’s World Mental Health Day. But what is there to celebrate? Raising awareness…don’t make me laugh! With the smash and grab raging on welfare benefits by the ConDems along with upping the ante on stigmatisation and vilification of benefit claimants (let’s not forget NL’s hideous involvement) with a backdrop of unenlightened attitudes towards mental distress. Again, what is there to celebrate…? Promoting what exactly?
Translated this means bullying people into the job market based on supposedly “objective medical assessment” (changes to DLA) when really it is based on ideology, it means forcing vulnerable claimants onto Workfare by some contracted-out private sector company, it means further alienation and isolation. Mental distress hits around one in four adults. That’s a helluva number of people yet it’s still stigmatised and hidden. Marginalised and vilified (apparently we are “bad, mad and dangerous to know”). During the past two years, recession and unemployment has caused.
- 1 in 10 had visited their GP for support
- 7% had started a course of medical treatment for depression
- 5% had seen a counsellor
- Half said staff morale was low
- 28% were working longer hours
- A third said staff were having to compete against each other.
And with further vicious attacks planned on the public sector there will be more distress, misery and suffering.
Expect more pain courtesy of the Con/Dems by way of massive searing public sector cuts. This means changes in working practices and conditions, modernisation, restructuring, liberalisation, contracting-out, outsourcing and what other words used as a code for privatisation will have a massive emotional and psychological negative impact on people, which will affect their health as we have seen. Recession means depression, with a swirling mix of a potent cocktail of anxiety, fear, alienation, pressure, stress and atomisation. No wonder people are reaching for the meds. We live in a debt-ridden insecure world where the ideology defines human beings in terms of material consumption. A dog-eat-dog society that devalues and demeans human beings. The global working class suffer the consequences of neoliberal ideology, people driven to the edge some pushed over the edge. A society based fundamentally on exploitation (even more alienating in some job sectors with the implementation of the LEAN mean production scheme) with increased stress, anxiety, distress and misery coupled with the impact of the recession.
I have cracked up in two jobs, one because I was given no support (funny enough it was a job as a mental health user involvement worker… irony of ironies) and the other was due to feeling undermined and undervalued all the time, I didn’t capitulate to the stiff upper lip bullying voluntary sector kinda macho environment. And coupled with the fact that due to my dalliances with mental distress I have been hauled in front of occupational health departs who have interrogated me about my mental health (Ooo yes, really improved …not… when questioned about personal issues that I don’t particularly want to ‘share’ with a prospective employer). Plus I am sure prospective employers have made up their objective minds about me when they discover my mental health history. It beggars belief. Not one of these employers’ implemented any kind of mental health awareness and support in changing the office dynamics. It was all my fault…apparently…’cos I had a propensity to mental distress nowt about how the environment impacted on me and others. It was all seen in a vacuum. Even the TU rep said to me at the time that he was shocked at their response and that if I was ‘expecting mea culpa..’ then I will be wasting my time.. He was correct. I left. The shit is still happening there though they won’t admit to it as everyone else has the problem.
My own experience of mental distress did heighten my awareness and consciousness about the world (I was already political) but it gave a different complexion on life, a sensitivity to the human responses to the ebb and flow of life. It did galvanise me in political activity in campaigning around the rights of mental health users For me, it gets tedious and irritating the number of times I am hauled in front of some occupational health department and interrogated about my mental health past. It is not about the extra support or help they can give me, it is finding out whether I am ‘fit’ and a good bet for the labour market. And with all this stacked against you loneliness and isolation play a major part as well.
Psychiatry rarely treats people as human beings instead we are reduced to specific criterion, behaviour, eventual diagnoses and labels. And as psychologist Lucy Johnstone argues psychiatric diagnoses are social judgement lacking scientific objectivity. The psychiatric system is fraught with power relationships and is ingrained with institutional racism, sexism and homophobia. The system reflects the oppression that exists within this society. Mental distress is on the increase due to the fragile and precariousness of life that includes debt, misery, job insecurity, pressures, oppression, poverty and so on yet psychiatry sees this increase in a social vacuum.
I believe in asylums, but my interpretation is different to, say, Marjorie Wallace’s (Saneline) understanding of the term or other more bourgeois interpretation. I believe there should be safe places people can go to which isn’t based on social control but based on the needs of the mh user who is able to define his/her needs on their own terms and a equal relationship between staff and user not this imbalance of power that exists between staff and user. That leads to mistrust. RD Laing was right when he said psychiatrists observe as opposed to listen.
The society I want to see is one that treats people with respect and understanding as opposed to vilification, social control and stigmatisation. And to go beyond a bio-medical understanding of mental distress (I don’t totally rule out medication because I do think there is a dialectical relationship between the social and the biological). There is a hell of a number of people out there who will experience mental distress but it is still hidden. It is not something people feel able to be vocal about. And a system, contradictorily, that desperately tries to “normalise” vulnerable people yet only too happy to turn a blind eye to what the powerful in society get away with.
Yes, it’s establishment-friendly World Mental Health Day where globally we stop and see the impact of mental distress, a day where we put the spotlight on this social phenomenon. But we need more than this so-called significant day that challenges and radically re-defines mental health with users of the system at the forefront of change.
See as well this article from Black Mental Health UK.
I’m sure psychologists and psychoanalysts would dispute this but I think it’s tiresomely common. On an EDs forum that I used to frequent a girl admitted that she’d been tempted to embrace veganism. She received an earful about her choice not being “normal”.
(Ooh, its also brings to mind a ruckus I had with my poor GP. “Yes, I’m nervous,” I admitted, “But I’ve got some decent goddamn reasons for being nervous!”)
“But I’ve got some decent goddamn reasons for being nervous!”
Yes, have said similar things usually to shrinks!
But I do think Johnstone is correct it is all based on judgements without scientific objectivity…
The trouble is RD Laing seems to have been a pretty dubious father to his own nine (or ten) children, another Sixties icon with feet of clay. Whether he helped others, he certainly damaged them – sometimes physically.
I’m sceptical of Laing’s claims – and haven’t studied them – but I think it’s slightly unfair to tar his work by association with his life. I hear Aristotle could be a bit of a bastard, yet people seem to think his logic holds up pretty well.
Indeed BenSix,
Rather like Freud, you can pick and choose Laing’s ideas. I really think Laing’s observations on professionals observe as opposed to listen is spot-on (certainly from personal experiences). And rather like Freud, Laing was utterly crap on women. Feminist Lynne Segal wrote an informative article on Laing/Cooper, anti-psychiatry movement and sexism.
My real life experience meeting him was of subtle common understanding and friendship.
Being a therapist is not about having a perfect bourgeois life in an dehumanised world, but being as authentic as possible in the contact.
I agree that reaching the chain of pain to the next is not truly insightful, but I disagree to consider the worth of a human only in his ability to full fill other peoples expectations.
I don’t know how it is for other, but to me he is still present.
Presence might be different things to different people.
I know for sure I prefer his passionate heartbeats to the actual reactionary cool&smart “know better but don’t engage” poseur attitude.
By the way, I am a woman. I would say that consideration how he was crap “with women” is slightly artificial view from that distance. I don’t know about others. It might have depend from person to person, I guess.
I am not “all women” and I assume our sense for being a human meeting a similar aware human mattered more to us.
A big issue I have with the whole counseling, ‘Assertiveness training’ and ‘self help’ industry, and the impact it has had on workplace managerial attitudes, is that it reflects blame back on the person suffering. If you are stressed or depressed or in some way having problems then it’s something wrong in you, you have to change, you have to be more assertive, you have to reassess your priorities, YOU have to deal with the problems that YOU are causing YOURSELF. I can’t imagine (from having been on counseling a few times and from having read around the subject) any counselor ever listening to someone who has come to them with stress or depression then saying “Actually, you’re basically fine. You’re just in a really crappy situation right now that would make anyone stressed/depressed and we need to find a way to change the situation.” Actually, a lot of the time a counselor saying that would go some way to relieving the stress/depression. Just having someone acknowledge that you’re in a bad situation can lift some of the pressure. Certainly more helpful than “You must change!”
I do think that medication can be helpful in many but not all situations, especially if combined with other therapies/support. Firstly, some depressions are chemical in nature (some constant, others cyclical often based on internal or external changes, e.g. S.A.D.) so medication can return the balance and get the person on a level playing field with others. Secondly, often the symptoms of stress and depression can exacerbate the situation. If you’re in a difficult situation at work and/or are worried about losing your job you’re likely to get stressed. In many people stress can cause problems with sleep so they’re tired all the time. If you’re tired you’re less able to deal with the situation and are more likely to make mistakes so making the situation worse. You’re also less likely to feel able to participate in other activities, e.g. socialising, that might provide a counterpoint to the stress causing activity. Similarly depression may make you withdraw from friends (or them to avoid you) when being with friends may help lift or at least reduce the depression. A short term use of medication so you can get a good night’s sleep and are able to participate in social activities can break the cycle and let you get on with dealing with or getting away from the thing that’s causing the problem.
In many cases, if a problem is dealt with early enough, the solution can be as simple as moving someone’s desk or fitting a better fluorescent tube. I’ve lost count of the number of offices I’ve seen where employers have fitted cheaper tubes that are only supposed to be used in areas that people enter rarely or only for short periods, e.g. storerooms or corridors, in offices where people are all day then wonder why they complain of eyestrain, headaches and stress. The problem is to get management to deal with the issue early enough and effectively, not just ignore it or throw a leaflet from the nearest counseling service at the sufferer and tell them they can go on their lunch break.
[...] Our Friend Harpy Marx comments (here), [...]
I was once off work with depression for about 9 months. I would imagine in the current climate I would have been sacked. Now trying my best to be modest I have since given 10 good years of high quality value added work to the organisation I work. My IT skills are acknowledged to be advanced and I have automated many processes. None of this would happen under the current climate. I think the Tories are pandering to the lowest common denominator and it is all very unhealthy and retrograde.
Please educate me as to what a mental health user involvement worker does? There must be value in it, otherwise the position would not exist.
In essence it means involving users in mental health services, usually funded by health authority etc. That’s all. Google search the term. Don’t have the job description.
[...] and highly recommend them all. See, for example, Tim Wilkinson on Jonathan Evans, HarpyMarx on mental health and Nafeez Ahmed on a post-carbon society. Elsewhere, I get all reactionary over higher education; [...]
Thanks for a brilliant piece. I would just add that the final piece of the jigsaw is the increasing use of CBT which is a ‘therapy’ which fits in brilliantly with the Government’s (and Blown’s was no different) main aim which is to drive people off sickness benefits in one way or another. I appreciate that different people need different therapies (or no therapy at all) and every case is individual. I was incredibly lucky to be assigned a wonderful psycho-therapist within the NHS about 10 years ago. He was able to point out that for me CBT is a disastrous therapeutic approach which would produce a highly adverse reaction. Before anyone objects I know there are people who it works for (they have told me so) but I am equally sure I am not unique. Forcing CBT – which I reiterate in its stress on the individual’s capacity to ‘do things for themselves’ aligns perfectly with a back to work ideology – on everyone is just another sign of the contempt with which those of us with MH issues are treated under the guise of caring.
In a society ruled by sociopathic carrierist imposing to all adjustment to their mad demands, a “good” therapist has clearly the function to help figuring out the mechanism leading to the dehumanisation affecting the own biography and to increase the awareness of the own potential for self care and solidarity.
Some have resit to participate to the finger pointing game dividing humanity into “winners and losers”, considering that life is not a post modern nihilistic game. Those rare birds can be recognised at their authenticity and straightness after years of facing a deregulated deeply neurotic system. Saying “no” to the profit driven nightmare has been their big yes!