The so-called epidemic of mental illness has become the subject of much discussion and consternation in recent years, even as the other major crises of “public health”–opioid addiction, obesity, and of course the coronavirus—consume much of our resources and attention. Because of our classification of “mental illnesses” as (just another) medical problem, it is difficult to decide just how severe and threatening the “epidemic” of mental illness might become. What if the greatest threats to the life and health of human societies are these intractable maladies of the soul?
Of course, contemporary medical science has sought to excise the spiritual dimensions of “mental illness” by reducing psychology to neuro-chemistry and privileging pharmaceutical interventions as the primary means of “treatment”. But the “epidemic” of mental illness continues to proliferate in spite of the supposed triumphs of pharmaceutical innovation. The extremely limited efficacy of drug therapies across all categories of mental illness would be scandalous in any other branch of scientific medicine, but researchers and psychiatrists continue to affirm the pharmacological approach as the only “scientific” one. In so doing they have to negate and suppress alternative interpretations of the phenomenon of “mental illness”.
What I would like to suggest is that without such “alternative interpretations” of “depression” and “anxiety”, “bipolar disorder” and “schizophrenia”, “autism” and “ADHD” (to name only a few key terms) both medical doctors and our societies as such will fail to address the disturbing increase in the frequency and scope of these conditions. Indeed, we must acknowledge that in some sense mental illnesses are communicable and social, and that this explains the rise and spread in cases as well as the stigma which accompanies them: intuitively, we sense that insanity is contagious.
This recognition of the collective and shared character of “mental illness” has been resisted by the establishment because it contains the seeds of a radical political insight: that human beings cannot be reduced to atomic individuals to be measured, studied, tested, sorted, judged and punished one by one. The system which constructs the illusion of individual “mental health” and “mental illness” has succeeded in distorting our vision, but has not completely extinguished the common sense of ordinary men and women who understand what is meant by the saying “there’s a method to his madness”. Even with severe mental illness where the person’s fundamental identity and the integrity of the personality are compromised, it can still be observed that far from being divorced from “reality”, the suffering patients are all-too-sensitive to it. At least they aren’t oblivious.
Professionals and experts do not have a monopoly on “reality”, and many patients resent them for pretending to be smarter and wiser than they really are. It is not self-evident that—from the evolutionary perspective of fitness and survival—the supposedly healthy population is better adapted to the perilous and precarious situation of our species. Not every mental patient is channeling the inner truth of the human condition, and not every madman is a dissident, but contemporary psychiatry is deaf, blind, and mute about the philosophical and political issues implicated in its practices.
By seeking to delineate the line between mental health and psychopathology in “scientific” terms, the apparatus of psychiatry has eroded our natural empathy with the mentally ill and displaced the practices of informal care and attention which were afforded to the “insane” in ages past.
One conundrum which presents itself in apprehending the “epidemic” of mental illness is that populations of “developed” countries (and especially the United States) have been inundated with psychopharmaceuticals without our having any idea what the consequences might be for society as a whole. The impact of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics could be every bit as profound and deleterious as that of “illicit” drugs and alcohol. Doctors and the drug industry promote drug treatment by framing it in individual terms, bribing doctors to prescribe drugs while saturating the airwaves with deceptive commercials. The “epidemic” of mental illness is manufactured to the extent that an increase in diagnoses is the necessary condition for the blockbuster sales of various mental health medications we have seen in recent years.
Patients only have one life to live, and it is a rare person who can endure being a human guinea-pig, especially when psychiatrists insist on drug treatment even when its side-effects are intolerable. The truth is that in many cases the “side-effects” might also be understood as “intended effects”, with the caveat that the patient is not being “treated” for illness, but “neutralized” by a society which views them as a burden and a nuisance. Such perceptions of maltreatment and bad faith are all-to-often dismissed as yet another symptom of the illness.
The shortcomings of the current regime are readily acknowledged by most practitioners, but not to the point of acknowledging the fundamental crisis.
From the psychiatric wards of the Stalinist Soviet Union to the nursing homes of the contemporary United States, we find that the diagnosis of “schizophrenia” has been abused in order to oppress those who rebel against authority. It is in fact very difficult to draw the line between sickness and health with respect to so-called schizophrenia because the diagnosis can only be successfully applied (so to speak) to those who are helpless and isolated. Fantasies and dreams only become “delusional” when authority intervenes to compel the “psychotic” person to surrender and accept the master’s version of reality. If in many cases the “delusions” are indeed delusional and false, this by itself is insufficient to justify the violence and coercion that psychiatric power brings to bear.
As for the other species of “mental illness”, we find that those treated for depression are forced to adopt a pantomime optimism—fake it ‘til you make it?—and let go, if they can, of the outlook which made them sad. Anti-depressants and psychotherapy combined do not solve the problem of “depression”, which in most cases persists, and there is no simple and reassuring explanation for the pronounced increase in “depressive disorders” which has been observed.
Anxiety, of course, is an almost-universal condition which has been re-framed as a psychiatric illness in recent years. No amount of alcohol, cannabis, benzodiazapines, or opioids can cure anxiety, but the development of alcoholism and drug addiction has been explained as the result of “self-medication” for anxiety. When does anxiety become pathological, and when is it a natural and healthy part of a balanced life? Is that really a question we should trust medical doctors to decide? As with depression, the mainstream of “mental health” acknowledges often acknowledges the problematic nature of its models and methods, but still they claim to speak from a position of scientific and moral authority which they probably do not deserve.
One could continue on in this manner at far greater length; the critical literature about “mental illness” is rich and extensive, and its impact can be observed among practitioners and patients alike, who are constantly confronting the fundamental crisis in psychiatric medicine which I have sought to illustrate above. Very little of what I say is original; others have said it better and their theories have been aired again and again over the past century.
The point which I wish to make is that it is the establishment of medical doctors and a complicit consensus of the educated elite in general who truly suffer from “undiagnosed mental illness”. As we know, the definition of “delusion” is a fixed belief which one holds even after it has been falsified. Dissatisfied patients and free-thinking practitioners may not have a new theory to replace the current one, but the existing system and its basic assumptions have been thoroughly and convincingly falsified. In a word, psychiatry is delusional.
The professionals who make their living in the treatment and management of “mental illness” are, in fact, all too aware that they operate within broken paradigms and that our theories of mental illness remain woefully inadequate. Yet because it exists as a powerful organized system backed by government and industry—which aim not to cure, but to control and to profit—the widespread recognition of what’s wrong with the status quo has been repressed and ignored.
I myself have been struggling with “mental illness” for many years and have often wished that psychiatry had the answers to my questions and the cure to what ails me. Alas, even as I consent to psychiatric treatment, I cannot pretend that my condition exists in a vacuum; like everyone else, I am am immersed and embedded in a vast mosaic, governed by circumstances beyond my control which cannot be addressed by measures that target me and me alone. In pursuing my own “mental health”, I find it necessary to shed light on the poverty of the existing order and to speak the truth about its more sinister dimensions which leaders and experts often conspire to conceal. While I have made baby-steps in the direction of healing through trial and error, I do not see any possibility for true recovery for myself or anyone else so long as advanced societies remain in the grip of a shared psychosis.