Painter Edvard Munch’s Melancholy
The skyrocketing rates of mental distress aren’t inevitable. They are the outcome of a capitalist society that denies our most basic social and emotional needs. People with mental distress have their conditions marginalised, are attacked with false allegations of shirking and find it harder to get find a job.
In the workplace, two thirds of people with mental distress say they experience stigma or discrimination. Mental distress services in the NHS are woefully underfunded and overstretched. Demeaning language about mental distress adds to the attacks. The crisis in mental health isn’t confined to a single section of society—but it is more likely to be experienced by particular groups.
Poorer people experience the pressures of surviving most acutely, and are therefore more likely to suffer from mental distress. And if people are oppressed in other ways—such as by sexism or racism—they become even more likely to experience poor mental health. We need more mental health services and better funding for them.
But more fundamentally, we need to go beyond a system of profit that’s destroying people’s mental health. Ever more neuroscience research recently backs up the finding that the human brain—and our biology more generally—is shaped by the environment we’re in. Neuroscientist Bruce Wexler said that data from a range of brain sciences shows that “our biological is social” in “a fundamental and thorough manner”.
“It is our nature to nurture and be nurtured,” he said. In other words, our biological brain is not an abstract entity. Its functioning is affected by our experiences. Negative experiences, such as those caused by neglect, trauma or austerity, can cause poor mental health. Too often there’s too much focus on mental distress as entirely caused by faulty brains and genes and medical treatment being the whole answer.
It’s true that medication and treatment can make material difference to people’s lives. But this “medical model” locates mental distress as exclusively within the individual and suggests that the fault lies in our brains or some personal weakness. The scientific basis for this argument has been consistently debunked. For instance, a number of studies show that the supposed link between chemical imbalances in the brain and depression are unproven.
Instead of the medical model, we need a social model that views the events in people’s lives—especially their early lives—as what shapes the way they experience the world. Particularly, we need to analyse how exploitation, oppression and alienation play a role in the onset of mental distress. We live in a society that isn’t based on meeting physical or emotional needs but is instead driven by the need to accumulate profit.
So people’s needs are often distorted or repressed. The roots of mental distress are found in a society that deprives us of any control over our lives and denies us our most basic needs to be creative and shape the world around us—what Karl Marx describes as alienation. The rise in mental distress comes at a time of intensification of work and pressure to meet targets for lots of people.
School children face increased competition and older people experience loneliness in an atomised society. We need to challenge feelings of powerlessness, shame and isolation that are associated with mental distress through promoting a sense of agency and solidarity. The starting point is to point out that people are struggling. But it’s not about your individual failings—it’s structured into a system of alienation and accumulation.
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