People are suffering and need answers. They need reliable answers and
stuff which works. 1 in 6 are suffering common mental disorders at work
(I assume this is every year and the figure comes from the Adult
Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007).
What the fuck are the answers? Is it the problem of humans being made to
be like machines? To work to deadlines? To work when they're unhappy? To
work but feel unrewarded? To work but not have their humanity understood
or have any compassion shown, except if they have a mental health diagnosis?
Perhaps the problem is those who move up the hierarchy of organisations
do so by being robot-like so their expectations are that people are like
how they are. Only those who are most robot-like succeed and those who
aren't are conditioned to be robot-like.
Many people want jobs for life. Many people want job security as well as
job satisfaction and lots of other stuff. People want to feel like part
of a team and not outsiders. Most of us are herd animals for all our
intelligence and free will. Workplaces cliques can be as much a source
of misery as the work systems and structures themselves.
Do we need psychiatric research to work this shit out? Well science is
still the dogma of ultimate truth. Unfortunately psychiatric research is
about as useful as used toilet paper. The application of the methods of
positivist science to the human condition and societies systems
(including work systems) is bloody hard but it feels like psychiatrists
aren't taking up the challenge.
People are coming to their doctors seeking answers. But what can doctors
do when they don't live in real life. They have to depend on scientific
evidence and the practices of evidence-based medicine. But they're
fucking poor. They're not offering doctors the solutions they need.
Qualtiative research offers possibilities but it is not what I would
call a scientific approach per se. It may be a starting point for better
quantitative research and in the absence of decent answers about the
human condition...well...that's a judgement call I'm not sure I can make.
What I can say is why waste more time on crappy research when there's a
far greater challenge ahead, a challenge which may take a thousand years
to come close to cracking: the understanding of the human condition
using the methods of science. It was science that got humankind to the
Moon, not religion and certainly not guesswork. It also took a war: the
Cold War. But that's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm talking about a challenge which would intrigue the greatest
scientists as much as the average person (and I'm not sure which of
those groups truly has the most to offer). It would challenge
entrepreneurs and steal them away from making profit. It would intrigue
master criminals and politicians alike.
It would give many people a pursuit for which they were will to live for
and, perhaps, to die for.
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