[Serious] The Mental Health Crisis

[vulcanlogician]

You think the root cause of depression is our economic system. Really?  Gee I wonder why no one else has posited that as an idea. People such as Psychologists and Psychiatrists

He said "general depression and anxiety." Granted, these phenomena are far too varied to have a single cause. All mental health professionals, though, hold that environmental factors significantly contribute to occurrences of these problems. Constant financial anxiety, feelings that you'll never get ahead of your debts or provide properly for your family -- these things can harm mental health. 

There are any number of other environmental factors involved, too. Lack of connection with others, for example. 

While investigations into brain chemistry have provided chemical treatments, it would be dangerous to conclude, therefore, that all depression and anxiety are only caused by chemicals, and that only new chemicals are needed to treat the problem. As with all brain electrochemical events, these harmful ones are reactions to other things. Simply doing drugs may be masking the symptom while leaving the causes intact. The "medical model" makes a hell of a lot of money for powerful people, though, so we're likely to be seeing that as our only option for now. 

Or think about it the other way: imagine a much improved society, where the environment is clean, economic security is guaranteed, violence is minimal, and people care about each other. Do you really think that such a society would have the same levels of depression and anxiety as ours does? 

Good story from ancient times: Porphyry, a Neoplatonic philosopher, had serious depression. "Melancholy" in those days. His teacher advised him that depression was caused by an imbalance of cold and dry humors in the body, and the treatment was to go somewhere warm and wet. Porphyry then spent two years on Mediterranean beaches, and his depression was cured. Moral of the story: even if the medical diagnosis is wrong, a change of setting may help. Especially if it involves sitting on the beach for a couple of years. Especially in the presence of warm and wet girls.

I liked this analysis.

I think one day we will fully realize that (instead of satisfaction of consumer desires) personal wellbeing of all citizens ought to be the goal of society. Satisfying consumer desires can play a role there, but it isn't the end-all-be-all that some take it to be. Allowing everyone to spend three or so weeks at a beach if they need to... several times a year even... may even play a positive role in productivity.

I know what would free me from my melancholy. Education. (Quality education, anyway.) One day that will be freely available to all, I think. But society needs to get its priorities straight. If each member playing his or her proper role is how we define justice, then we need to ensure each member is healthy and happy so that they may play that role to their fullest.

Depression is not an easy nut to crack. What I've found is that the mental health system strives to produce well socialized individuals to treat a broad array of mental issues. And this may help in many cases. But sometimes people are stuck in abusive situations. Insidious ones, where entire groups of people are "in on" using an abusing one individual. There are a plentitude of well documented cases where this happens with children and young adults. The funny thing is, I think depression in these particular individuals is correlated to them being "too well socialized" in a sense. If they would fight back... maybe even be "anti-social"... this might help them out. But this is something that is difficult for mental health services to endorse or foster. After all, anti-social people are a problem. Depressed people who put up with abuse silently are not. No psychological material I've encountered before has described the depths of social abuse that I've witnessed multiple times. But you don't have to take my word for it. It goes so far as to be criminal in nature on occasion. It's been documented. And when this happens people are "shocked" to see that children or others are treated in such a cruel manner (sometimes by dozens of people). But we never stop to think how it is quite common for people to be abused thusly in a more dilute (noncriminal) way. And how this, in turn, causes depression.

But all that is only one cause... albeit a rare one. Depression can come from isolation, lack of sex or romance, or a multitude of things. At the very least, the mental health profession is aware of much of this nuance.

@Oldandeasilyconfused Bro... calm down, man. I've never seen you come out swinging like this. People are just offering up ideas, not making broad generalizations.