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.
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