I think I understand where you're coming from. Despite how it might seem from my writing here, I am not anti-psychiatry and I don't believe people should "embrace their illness" and go off their meds. Embracing depression or schizophrenia seems the same as "I'm embracing my diabetes so I'm eating all the sugar I want and not taking insulin." Preposterous.
Regarding the capitalist view, you are correct. Still, an illness is basically defined as an inability or a difficulty in function, whether it's physical or mental functioning.
What I'm trying to get at perhaps clumsily, is that I disagree with mainstream psychiatry about both the etiology and treatment. They claim it's basically found solely in the individual, something (but we don't yet quite know what) malfunctions in the brain and you're depressed. Or you're having paranoid thoughts. And their treatment is likewise individual (even when it takes place in a group therapy setting), take your meds, "better yourself," "make a commitment to yourself," "fight," etc.
But when you listen to what the people are actually saying in the therapy groups (If you've been in therapy for 25 years you've probably sat in at least one circle) it nearly always has to with their social environment. They have "bad mothers," or they're lonely, or they find it hard to connect with others. This is never really brought into focus despite it featuring so prominently in discussion. The social and group dynamic is always reduced back to the individual and how the individual can deal and cope with it. Basically, to individual biology, but what I am trying to say is that the natural and the symbolic always work together.
A digression: it's becoming more and more clear with genetics, that genes can not only encode traits but encode "recipes" for traits to be socially transmitted and learned. If there's such a link on a genetic level between the individual and the social, how can we still cling to dualism?
So, why can't the community be more involved? We now have dating apps, and before dating apps we had matchmakers and even just friendly setups. Clearly, we recognize dating, love, and marriage as something that the community should try to facilitate. So why can't it be the same for mental health?
Why do we confine mental health to the clinic and to a professional's office and to hospitals? Mental health should be a societal Praxis. Not embracing illness, not making excuses for our dysfunctions wherever they may come from (hopefully one day we can know for sure), but working together to overcome, connect, and give mercy to each other.
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Date: May 27th, 2025 13:17 (UTC)I think I understand where you're coming from. Despite how it might seem from my writing here, I am not anti-psychiatry and I don't believe people should "embrace their illness" and go off their meds. Embracing depression or schizophrenia seems the same as "I'm embracing my diabetes so I'm eating all the sugar I want and not taking insulin." Preposterous.
Regarding the capitalist view, you are correct. Still, an illness is basically defined as an inability or a difficulty in function, whether it's physical or mental functioning.
What I'm trying to get at perhaps clumsily, is that I disagree with mainstream psychiatry about both the etiology and treatment. They claim it's basically found solely in the individual, something (but we don't yet quite know what) malfunctions in the brain and you're depressed. Or you're having paranoid thoughts. And their treatment is likewise individual (even when it takes place in a group therapy setting), take your meds, "better yourself," "make a commitment to yourself," "fight," etc.
But when you listen to what the people are actually saying in the therapy groups (If you've been in therapy for 25 years you've probably sat in at least one circle) it nearly always has to with their social environment. They have "bad mothers," or they're lonely, or they find it hard to connect with others. This is never really brought into focus despite it featuring so prominently in discussion. The social and group dynamic is always reduced back to the individual and how the individual can deal and cope with it. Basically, to individual biology, but what I am trying to say is that the natural and the symbolic always work together.
A digression: it's becoming more and more clear with genetics, that genes can not only encode traits but encode "recipes" for traits to be socially transmitted and learned. If there's such a link on a genetic level between the individual and the social, how can we still cling to dualism?
So, why can't the community be more involved? We now have dating apps, and before dating apps we had matchmakers and even just friendly setups. Clearly, we recognize dating, love, and marriage as something that the community should try to facilitate. So why can't it be the same for mental health?
Why do we confine mental health to the clinic and to a professional's office and to hospitals? Mental health should be a societal Praxis. Not embracing illness, not making excuses for our dysfunctions wherever they may come from (hopefully one day we can know for sure), but working together to overcome, connect, and give mercy to each other.