Skip to main content

Working Class, Minorities and Mental Health in the United States: A Political Perspective

Sk Zafar Ali

We often hear that mental health is a personal issue and if you are going through something, you should seek either counselling or medication or both. While this may be working for the upper and middle class whites; working class, minorities, and the differently abled are handed the short end of the stick.


For decades, the number of cases of serious mental health disorders have been rising[1] and the “for-profit” healthcare system has largely failed to keep it in check. The system, built to favour big pharma, either denies treatment to those who can’t afford it, or try to get laws passed that forces treatment on individuals as long as it is profitable for them.[2] Furthermore, it has been reported that mental health professionals tend to discriminate on the basis of race and class – a middle class black man is 60% less likely for a therapist to agree to see him. The situation is worse for the working class when compared to the white middle class – therapists are 70% to 80% less likely to call you back for an appointment.[3] Besides, psychiatric intervention facilities do not guarantee good care, and studies have reported that getting admitted into a psychiatric facility increases the risk of suicide.[4]

The situation is worse for people with mental illness and Native Americans. While people with mental illness, blacks in particular, are likely to be killed when they encounter the police,[5][6][7][8][9] the natives are going through a suicide crisis which is the outcome of centuries of displacement, disenfranchisement, and genocide.[10] Moreover, people caught up within the justice system, which already disproportionately targets minorities, are tortured with inhumane punishments like solitary confinement, which continues till date despite outcries from human right groups.[11] In 2015, Human Rights Watch published a 127 page report detailing multiple instances of correctional staff using excessive violent force against mentally ill inmates; in the form of chemical sprays, electric stun weapons, and physical trauma, which resulting in broken jaws and ribs, lacerations, burns, and internal organ damage.

When the state sponsors violence against the mentally ill, attempts at spreading awareness and removing stigma pertaining to mental illnesses will not be effective until we are ready to face the political realities of the situation. Mental health under capitalism is defined using terms like ‘happiness’, and a person being told that they are ‘mentally ill’ when the productivity of their labour is affected – obviously has a political agenda. Society is structured in a manner that links our self-worth to labour – a person is made to feel useless and unproductive when they are not working. This combined with consumerism and materialism give rise to unrealistic aspirations and the belief that they can be achieved. Entrepreneurial fantasies are used to brainwash people into thinking that anyone, regardless of their ethnic and social backgrounds, can become Bill Gates if they work hard enough and failure is blamed on individual, not the system.[12] What does most damage is the ideology that material wealth is the key to happiness; this leads to consumerism, and the greedy consumer makes for the best worker, grinding like the rat in the roll cage, hoping that one day he will be rich – while his labour is exploited to fill the shareholders’ pockets. For the vast majority of the working class, mental health disorders are a function of the terrible quality of life that they are forced to lead, and attempts to numb this suffering with drugs and therapy sessions are just stopgap solutions to keep their life barely tolerable so that their labour can be exploited to make the rich, richer. Thus, as Kate Bradley notes, mental health treatments can be viewed as a form of bio-political control to keep workers functional.[13]

Under these circumstances, it is flawed to study mental health problems as individual issues. Multiple studies have linked social class and economic well-being to higher risk of mental health issues. A 2015 study suggests that effects of class relations on depression and anxiety extend well beyond those of socioeconomic stratification and point towards the understudied mechanisms of domination, alienation, and exploitation due to poor working conditions under capitalism. Furthermore, the authors argue that social position, along with how one came to occupy it, has implications for depression and anxiety.[14] The following year, another study suggested that exploitation in the workplace generates mental health inequalities because of how labour is handled and disciplined under capitalism.[15] To make matters worse, most cases of mental health problems are worsened because of how the system is designed – from big pharma putting their profits before human lives[16] to doctors which can be biased[17] or abusive[18]. Additionally, an ableist culture stigmatizes disability and attaches inferiority to dependency. As the mental health crisis slowly turns into an epidemic, it is imperative that we place the blame where it belongs – with the system, which privatizes stress and anxiety, and depoliticizes mental health.


References:



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hardin's trauma

“After”, is a 2019 teen romantic drama directed by jenny gage that revolves around the love of  Tessa, an inexperienced teenage girl, with Hardin, a mysterious ‘bad boy’ . Hardin, the main male character, never had a secure relationship with his father. When Hardin was young, his father used to be an alcoholic with a lot of debt. When he was just eight years old, intruders broke into his home looking for his father for money, however, there was only Hardin and his mother. The intruders forced themselves on Hardin’s mother, and Hardin, who was sleeping then, came downstairs to see what was wrong. To Hardin’s shock, his mother was being raped by three men, one by one. Hardin’s mother told him to leave, however, one man forced him to watch everything.  I would assume that Hardin has PTSD as a result of this incident, and in this paper I will try to prove it. Symptoms of PTSD and scenes that prove Hardin had it: The person subsequently re-experiences the event through both intrusive memori

Disorderly Delvian: A Deep Dive into "Anna Delvey" through the Lens of NPD

       A markedly thick accent, a mop of blonde hair, a magical array of unimaginably expensive clothing, and an air of calculated mystery mesh uncomfortably together to invent Anna Delvey, the centre of Netflix’s appropriately named documentary/drama series, “Inventing Anna”. This series tells or rather retells the fascinating story of how one woman deceived the creme de la creme of New York society as well as some prestigious financial institutions under the guise that she was a wealthy heiress from Germany. The series follows a journalist, Vivian Kent, as she tries to uncover the carefully constructed web of lies Anna spun around high society after her arrest, heavily interspersed by flashbacks, present-day court hearings, and interviews with the enigma herself (Shondaland, 2022). Anna as a character, infused with a troubling reality and a dramatised narrative, presents an interesting scope to study the symptomatology of Narcissistic Personality Disorder as presented in her behaviou

The Psychological Depth of Good Will Hunting

Shorya Sehgal Good Will Hunting revolves around the interaction of two rebellious characters, Sean Maguire and Will Hunting, who, to a certain extent, help each other to conform slightly. Will is a brilliant but troubled, young adult. He suffers from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), inferiority complex, defence mechanisms and attachment disorder. A mathematical genius, Will had a complete disrespect for authority and for his own considerable talents. As the story progressed, I was able to see Will’s personal growth as he developed an extremely strong relationship with his therapist, Sean. Sean had fought his own battles in life which had made him tough. This significantly helped Will and Sean to connect to each other on a deep, emotional level. What struck me the most in the movie is how coherently Will's journey is tied together. His transition from an inexpressive, troubled young guy to a mature and responsible one is shown very exquisitely. By the end, he was able to be