why it wasn't 0 in 4. I knew the figure from Mind's use of the language:
"1 in 4 people every year experience mental distress." I thought why
aren't we working towards a society where the figure is 0 in 4 and no
one experiences mental distress.
The journey on that thought process about human suffering has been a
long and winding one. Originally I was confused by the biomedical
explanation: misery is a chemical imbalance. That's not true but it
kinda is as well. Chemicals seem to the best way at the moment for a
society that wants to eradicate misery. It is the path I chose myself
because of my long standing drug addiction and it was imposed upon me
when I was treated by psychiatrists.
The journey has taken me to many different ways of thinking about misery
and about mental illness (biomedical) and mental health problems
(psychosocial). It was important to understand the history of psychiatry
and pre-and extra-psychiatric mental health systems, to see that there
is an objective truth that's very hard to define and then there's the
subjective judgements on the objective truth of the human condition. The
subjective interpretations dominate mental health and healthcare. They
dominate conversations about misery too.
The two sides are misery is part of life or misery is an illness to be
removed from life. They're exclusive concepts. One accepts suffering.
One doesn't. I'm a mixed up hypocritic and I don't have clarity on which
camp I fall in. In my own life I accept a lot of misery and I don't
consider most mental illnesses as true illnesses. I consider the
suffering of people to be something I'm strongly against and I do what
is in my power to reduce that for everyone and anyone, and I fail.
The suffering of behavioural and emotional disorders is real however the
causes of the suffering aren't or aren't constant.The untapped area or
the area where there is most need for change is society itself because
it's maladaption is, in my opinion, the cause of the distress of mental
illness.
However even in a utopian society there would still be emotional pain in
my opinion. That's because emotional pain is part of life. This is a
discompassionate view of suffering but it is not without a lot of lived
experience behind it. The human condition is a wide variety of
experiences that are good and bad. The bad times are unpleasant and can
kill people. Those bad times also save a purpose for many people. Misery
has been my best teacher when it came to personal development.
I still have no answers..In many ways I have more questions,. It is
simpler to consider the end of misery in the same way as the end of
poverty: a vital goal that humanity should strive for. It's harder to
think about whether that's a good thing for society and the human race
and whether achieving a dstress-free existence is a goal or not. The
following question is then what is the goal when it comes to human misery?
There are still many ills in society, many causes of distress that
needed be there. This can be from the desire created by the advertising
industry, the desire that leads young girls, and increasingly boys too,
to diet themselves into a mental illness. Childhood bullying is an
experience many people have suffered and it's something that happens in
adulthood too. Various forms of exclusion for whatever reason - not just
mental health stigma -- can and are being changed.
Individuals may still suffer regardless. Develioped nations don't have
significantly higher levels of positive mental health compared to poorer
nations In fact the evidence (on Westernised measures) is many
developing countries have better mental health compared to the richest
nations. This effect may be an effect of the makadaption of the
post-modern, post-Industrial Age societies. The wealth of the most
piowerful nations in the world has not brought their citizens an
associated increase in happiness. In fact post-WWII Britain had higher
levels of happiness than during the boom periods in the late 20th century.
This thought process is futile of course. It is just a thought process
which many people will have engaged with and I hope they came to a
better answer than I have. I don't even have a conclusion. I wouldn't
have even started on the thought process unless I was miserable. May
that's the only conclusion I've got to so far.
No comments:
Post a Comment