A summarized collection and critical assessment of the ongoing research that exposes the sickening effects of capitalism on mental health was recently published as a chapter in the Oxford Textbook of Social Psychiatry by epidemiologists Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot and Seth Prins.
Psychiatry and social sciences’ focus on individual factors has failed to account for the role of structures and systems – such as capitalism – in developing mental illness and the disparities in psychological forms of suffering.
The authors write:
“What explains these trends and inequities? While this question has been a primary concern of quantitative social science, the resulting answers have not always engaged directly with capitalism—a socio-economic system that not only structures societal distributions of health-affecting resources and power but also modulates our experiences of reality and the production of knowledge within it. Instead, mental health researchers have focused on the roles of individual-level factors like ‘risk behaviors’ or socio-economic status. Moreover, capitalism’s ubiquity makes it difficult to isolate pathways through which it affects any single outcome like mental health.”
To move away from this individualizing trend, the authors review the most recent and historical literature and empirical research that illustrate the influence of capitalism on mental health in this chapter.
For example, studies have shown that people who adhere to capitalist values are more likely to experience loneliness and decreased psychological well-being. Capitalism has also been previously conceptualized as a social determinant of health.
Eisenberg-Guyot and Prins agree, as they “recognize that all research on the social determinants of mental illness implicates capitalism.” In addition, however, they draw an explicit connection between capitalism and racism, colonialism, and the patriarchy, making a visible connection between capitalism and the suffering of women, people of color, the colonized, and other minoritized groups.
Original Studies on the Relationship between Capitalism and Mental Health
Using official data and observations, Friedrich Engels developed one of the first epidemiological studies ever and included information about physical and mental health in Britain. He found a connection between the poor work conditions of early industrialization and the illness and premature deaths of workers. Engels also found that the capitalist promotion of competition led to increased loneliness, indifferences, and isolation. Moreover, repetitive tasks led to a lack of creativity and autonomy and increased boredom. Finally, he described how the physical illnesses developed at work led to irritability, hopelessness, and depression.
Through similar methods, Karl Marx identified how the industrialist material conditions and dynamics influenced the mental and emotional life of the working class. By minimizing the tasks of the workers, the capitalist “increases efficiency and productivity (and thus profit) but degrades and deskills labor.” This reduced the creative capacity of the worker and generated isolation, powerlessness, boredom, anxiety, and a lack of purpose. The time spent working also took away from the time and energy necessary for the worker to engage in their social life and more fulfilling activities.
Marx and Engels also identified how women and children worked under worse conditions than adult men, were paid less, and had added responsibilities such as domestic work, leading to a disparity in “exhaustion, pulmonary disease, injuries, poisonings” and lower life expectancies (or infanticide).
While class difference was the primary focus of Marx’s and Engels’ epidemiological analyses, Marx briefly acknowledged the role of colonialism and slavery in creating and perpetuating capitalism and how they generated mass death and suffering among the colonized groups.
Marx didn’t generate a theory around sexism and racism, but the authors explain that “feminist and black radical theorists have filled these gaps, arguing that capitalism depends on racism and sexism to maximize profits through hyper-exploitation, colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy.”
“They argue that capitalism has been racialized and gendered since its inception and that it has used such hierarchies to expand – by appropriating resources and Labour from Africa, the Americas, other parts of the Global South, and elsewhere, and by creating and exploiting gender divisions of labor.”
Alienation and Work Environment
Many researchers were influenced by Marx’s theory of alienation which states that under capitalism, workers are alienated – or separated – from the fruit of their labor (as the capitalist takes both what workers create and most of the profit that is made from their work), from themselves (their needs and desires) and from others (such as other workers, friends, family, and community).
Social Psychologist, Seeman, expanded Marx’s work and identified various dimensions of alienation, such as powerlessness (belief in the inability to achieve one’s goals), meaninglessness (lack of confidence in predicting the outcomes of one’s actions), normlessness (having to engage in socially unacceptable behavior to achieve one’s goals), and isolation (lack of connection with others). In addition, he and other researchers found that alienation was associated with depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, hopelessness, and self-perceived physical health.
The authors found similarities between these findings and other theories. For example, they mention how psychoanalytic theorists have also believed that the dehumanization of workers under capitalism hinders their creativity, social connections, and the ability to satisfy their needs and desires. Eisenberg-Guyot and Prins also see the compatibility between these ideas and the diathesis-stress model (which argues that the interaction between socially-patterned experiences and stressful life experiences, alongside one’s history, contribute to the development of mental illness) as the structured life of the working class alongside their alienation and personal histories influence the development of mental illness.
Occupational research has also found a relationship between alienation and mental health. Karasek developed the demand/control or job strain model, which studies two aspects of work. The first is job demands or the laboriousness necessary to go about one’s work and the stress that arises from other tasks and interpersonal conflict at work). The second is job control, the employee’s ability to change the work environment or how they perform their tasks.
According to this line of research, people whose jobs had higher demand and lower control were more likely to report more anxiety, depression, exhaustion, distress, and stress-related physical health issues. However, Karasek fails to acknowledge the power dynamics that are played out due to class relations and the capitalist structure. Job strain itself isn’t the cause of health disparities between classes but the result of inequality.
Due to changing social structures and dynamics, sociologists and psychologists left behind the dichotomy of capitalist/worker and began using a model that fit the newly emerging hierarchies within the workplace. This included the capitalist, the manager, the supervisor, and the worker. Managers and supervisors are characterized by the contradiction of their class location as they do not own the means of production but overlook the laborer’s work. Using the theory of class contradiction, researchers found that low-level supervisors had less control over the workplace policies, environment, and decision-making processes. Being “dominated and exploited by capitalists and antagonized by subordinates (the contradictory class location hypothesis),” these low-level supervisors were at higher risk of developing mental illness, reporting higher levels of depression, anxiety, and alcohol use disorder when compared to both higher-level managers and workers.
Other studies show that capitalists and managers report better psychological well-being than workers and supervisors. Still, the relationship between class and health was stronger amongst men compared to women. They hypothesize that this difference might be attributed to the disparities in heterosexual couples’ division of domestic labor, among other reasons. Additionally, recent research has found that the petit bourgeoisie (or entrepreneurs, small business owners, professionals, etc.) were found to be at higher risk of mental illness than the previously mentioned classes as they are often competing with capitalists without having the same number of resources and often end up becoming part of the working class.
While most research in these areas used self-reports, which measure the person’s perception of job strain, other researchers have used different kinds of data to study workplace social relations and their influence on mental health. For example, in 2015, Muntaner and colleagues measured organizational-level exploitation using employers’ for-profit or not-for-profit status and measured managerial domination in the frequency of labor-relations violations. They found that US nursing assistants exposed to more organizational-level exploitation and managerial dominance were at higher risk of experiencing depression.
Studies using similar, more objective measures found that the percentage of income workers who were not paid in accordance with their labor increased the workers’ odds of developing mental illness. Moreover, employees whose work had become more automatized had more odds of engaging in binge drinking than workers with more authority and autonomy over their work.
While class status has often predicted mental health outcomes, research shows that people of color experience worse health outcomes across most classes. Since the early 20th century, researchers have linked capitalism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy to mental health disparities. More recent studies have found how the mental health of racialized workers is affected by chronic stress, estrangement, double shifts, residential and occupational segregation, and various forms of state violence; racialized women being disproportionality affected.
Psychiatric epidemiology has often failed to study the interconnected structural and systemic factors (e.g., colonialism, racism, colonialism, sexism, misogyny and patriarchy, LGBTQphobias, etc.) that influence mental health. Future studies should aim to fill the gaps in research about the connection between capitalism and the objective conditions lived by people of color and people of the Global South.
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Eisenberg-Guyot, J. & Prins, S. J. (2022). The Impact of Capitalism on Mental Health: An Epidemiological Perspective. In D. Bhugra, D. Moussaoui & T. J. Craig (Eds.) Oxford Textbook of Social Psychiatry (pp.195-222) https://doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198861478.003.0022 (Link)
This article is almost funny. Of course capitalism has huge faults. But so does every other socioeconomic system. Take this comment about “a connection between the poor work conditions of early industrialization and the illness and premature deaths of workers.” Do the authors really think circumstances were better under feudalism, where workers were virtual slaves to nobles.
Were conditions better under Mao whose policies led to the starvation death of 45 MILLION people? Or do they prefer North Korea?
Under capitalism in the United States children are educated and most people have health care and housing. Is it perfect? No. But what is.
I wish MIA would no longer publish articles like this, which are ideological, show little insight and have only a marginal connection to mental health. There are intelligent, nuanced ways to criticize capitalism. This article isn’t it.
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Well, maybe it is the degree of capitalism that has become a problem, capitalism on steroids if you will. As I’ve written, capitalism may be at the root of so many of our social psychiatric problems – racism, burnout, climate change, loneliness, for-profit managed care, and more.
– Hey-Hey
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The things you blame on capitalism have been found in many different systems and throughout history. Slavery, not just racism, but actual slavery, was common in Ancient Rome and Greece. It exists in many places in the world today. Burnout? I guess you have to have some kind of wealth to have the privilege to burn out climate change? Too many people is probably the root cause. Loneliness? That’s a problem in urban societies. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea.
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Capitalism saved the world from Nazism and rebuilt Europe after the war. Capitalism has made a huge contribution to the world economy, preventing millions from starving to death. We offer free medicine, clean water, food, education, military protection and intervention.
Not always. Bill Clinton who at heart was much more of a socialist than capitalist, turned his back on the 800,000 blacks murdered in Rwanda as he was president. He lied to the victim’s families, saying he was waiting in his office for word on the situation over there. All the while he knew Tutsis were being slaughtered in record breaking numbers.
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With all due respect, many businesses profited mightily from the Third Reich, and Hitler’s rise to power would never have happened without the huge support of capitalists in Germany and around the world:
https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed/german-businesses-and-nazis
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis
Many US industrialists supported Hitler as a bulwark against Communism:
https://therealnews.com/d-day-how-the-us-supported-hitlers-rise-to-power
https://www.truehoop.com/p/hitlers-american-business-friends
So the evidence is not that Capitalism saved us from the Nazis. Rather, the Nazis and Capitalism were rather friendly. It was the courageous nations whose people sacrificed by going to battle on the air, sea, and ground and were willing to sacrifice their lives who ended Hitler’s power. And let’s not forget that this effort would never have succeeded without the enormous Russian army, from a Communist country at the time.
Hitler’s demise occurred because a number of countries agreed that they needed to stop him. Regular citizens of both Democratic and Communist countries battled Hitler while most of the Capitalists sat back and sold goods to one side or the other or both.
As to rebuilding Europe, perhaps you are forgetting the Marshall Plan, one of the most “socialistic” efforts ever put out by the USA, not to mention the GI Bill, where formerly poor kids were given college educations and cheap housing loans and started the biggest expansion in the middle class in the history of the world? Hardly the work of capitalism! More the result of smart investment of tax dollars leading to great results.
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Billy Williams III, you say “Bill Clinton who at heart was much more of a socialist than capitalist, turned his back on the 800,000 blacks murdered in Rwanda as he was president.” Why say “blacks” if one can simply say “people”? The Tutsis do not see themselves as “blacks”.
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“many businesses profited mightily from the Third Reich”
In fact, the profits were extracted from the free labour provided by the laws passed by the National Socilaists. The ‘extraction’ was done with models which would no doubt have fitted very well with what Marx described in Capital, a fairly basic economic model. Little outlay, and dispose of those whose economic viability was no longer deemed of any use (as assessed by psychiatrists).
I’ve been examining the use of ‘mental health’ with regards the way the State managed to ‘dispose’ of me from my duties when it looked like I might become a whistleblower. The ‘training’ (from psychiatrists) being received by lawyers in how to use ‘mental health services’ to minimise the cost of disposal of ‘human resources’ telling. What better way to “lure with bait (payout) then strike with chaos” (subjected to forced ‘treatments to remove the money provided to lure into the ‘trap’). The “elegant method of overcoming ‘resistance'”, with lawyers and psychiatrists boasting about their methods, and the ‘victims’ ending up under the ‘guillotine’. No avenue for complaint once you have been slandered by mental health services, and your documents and legal narrative “edited”.
What would one expect when morals and ethics go out the door? We have a fine example in the ‘history’ of the fascists.
I can only see an increase on this disgraceful method of dealing with workplace conflicts (that is, use mental health services as a mechanism for abusing the workers), especially given the fear of Unions to stand up for their ‘members’, and instead trying to have them resign to throw them under a bus. Unions? Not worth the money they are being paid for memberships. They are like your rights which don’t exist, as soon as you need them, they disappear.
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Joanna, I think the point of using the term “blacks” signifies the hypocrisy of a president who was promoted as a “I feel your pain” kind of empathetic, caring man who would never turn his back on the oppressed or the poor and helpless.
I fear you miss the main thrust of the comment. Anyone can say, “Hooray for our side.” Clinton just made one hundred million dollars by fooling many. He lied and deceived hundreds of millions of folks because he wanted to be popular, to sign fabulous book deals and agreeing to many speaking engagements for huge sums of money. Sacrificing American soldiers in the heart of Africa had no upside for him, or so he believed. A call to the U.N. to ask for more peacekeepers could have gone long a way to end the free-for-all. He did not want to risk triggering the Proxmire Act, requiring our participation in cases of mass slaughter, so he pretended not to have any idea how bad it was, like Germans in WW2 who claimed they had no idea Jews were being eliminated. As an American, I’m ashamed of my country. We owe their loved ones our deepest apology and reparations.
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Van Scnassin, I do understand the main thrust of Billy’s comment. If Billy had written: “Bill Clinton turned his back on the 800,000 people murdered in Rwanda”, Clinton’s hypocrisy would still be obvious, just like his dismissive attitude towards a genocide taking place in Africa.
I find the words “800,000 blacks murdered in Rwanda” problematic because they reduce the victims to their “race”. Even “Black people” would sound much better than “blacks”. The latter word unfortunately often sounds dismissive and may even sound dehumanizing.
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Until & unless you’re prepared to equally reject capitalism, AND it’s bastard child, the pseudoscience drug racket & social control mechanism known as “psychiatry”, your comments have no validity….
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I am TOTALLY down with rejecting capitalism AND psychiatry! I just don’t yet know what the better plan is. I think we’ll have to invent it as we go along.
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Steve says, “I just don’t know what the better plan is. I think we’ll have to invent it as we go along.”
I like that approach, as having just one set of political blowhards running the show gets things into worse trouble.
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Stevie mentions “capitalism on steroids”.
I would agree.
I think capitalism capitalizes on the worst in human nature. But the same happens in socialism and communism. You confront human nature wherever you go.
And I’m sick of hearing about them. Dump all three and come up with something new. And dump psychiatry while you’re at it.
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Marie, can I suggest a broader reading base for you – Perhaps Spengler’s Decline of the West with regard to the decay of Western culture, then some Foucault and about the individuating (isolating) processes that have occurred over the past 200 years, especially the speeding up of alienation under neoliberalism. Then perhaps ‘The Dawn of everything: a new history of humanity’ by Graeber and Wengrow, which is about the last 17,000 years, and how we have sought (and achieved for long periods) egalitarianism. It appears to be something which we NATURALLY gravitate towards; a journey which is disrupted by natural disasters and “disturbed” neighbours that make us lose our reason (sanity) for a while. Hopefully this will lead to a dream of living in the eastern State of Ch’i during the Han dynasty between 201BC and 193BC – when a prosperous egalitarianism existed….
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https://youtu.be/trCj4rVdaBQ
Globally our species’ attempts to save the world becomes what destroys it.
All political parties and all religions and all philosophies have beauty in them…but ALL of these can be taken over by bullying…which is a separate force entirely. Many people want socialism. Many people want capitalism. Can we bear the different? Our intolerance is ending peace. 40, 000 migrants risked their lives and their childrens lives to cross treacherous oceans this year to come to a country that is capitalist. Like it or not those are the numbers. Many of the migrants are educated and astute enough to make balanced choices for themselves. They prefer not to go to a socialist country. That being said, many do want to relocate to a socialist country. No one route leads to perfection. It is bullying we must find sane solutions to, not what vision houses the bullying.
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This reminds me of a joke from Mad Magazine in my youth:
What’s the difference between Capitalism and Communism?
In Communism, Man exploits Man.
While in Capitalism, it’s the other way around!
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Steve says, “….What’s the difference between Capitalism and Communism? In Communism, Man exploits Man. While in Capitalism, it’s the other way around!”
Thank you for mentioning exploitation. I think that’s eventually what happens, no matter what political system is in place. That’s why I think it best not to wait for whatever government comes around to make a meaningful difference in one’s mental wellbeing. But that doesn’t mean not looking for ways to make things better and fairer. It has to be a flexible, ever-evolving process.
And no one needs to read a long, complicated, erudite article to know that the dog-eat-dog world we live in is unfair and makes life difficult, even miserable for many people. But how to help make things better right here and now? Spreading awareness about the inconsistencies of psychotherapy and outright lies of psychiatry, because neither these things are any less harmful no matter what political system is adopted.
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Political systems have to remain flexible, or else things devolve into a bitter and restless vying for power. And since when is that good for anyone’s well-being?
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And both psychology, (with its various forms of idiot “therapies”), and psychiatry (and its dumbbell selection of “diagnoses” and so-called “medications”) have thrived — be it communism, capitalism, or socialism.
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What’s at play throughout human history? The egoistic ‘Need for Power’.
Here’s a thought-provoking article: “Why Intellectuals Are So Upset By the ‘Injustices’ of the Market Economy”, by Rainer Zitelmann, published in Forbes Magazine
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Exploitation: the fact of making use of a situation to gain unfair advantage for oneself –
This describes the hidden reality underlying psychiatry.
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Steve Forbes is making a nice buck publishing his magazine with that information tucked inside.
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True….
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Exploitation: an unfortunate reality that is in no way limited to capitalism.
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SPAM. THIS POST WAS MARKED AS SPAM.
{You are operating at a level of privilege that allows you to ignore the fact that others don’t always “have a choice” like you do.}
How do you know?
“Try to open your mind to others’ experiences.”
You are making a false assumption
“Daiphanous Weeping November 11, 2022 at 3:03 pm
Birdsong, I would rather shame a child sex abuser and be called a bully than nonchalantly look away at what is going on in our communities.”
That’s how I feel.
“Shaming and shunning are emotional abuse. And emotional abuse is not, in any way, “non-violent”. And it is never “deserved”. It is silenced violence.” birdsong
He will get a prison term which is a form of violence, and will suffer at the hands of inmates most likely. jeff dahmer got his head smashed in, priests are killed, etc.
Someone who is shunned always has the option of changing his behavior if he wants it to stop.
Stress causes ulcers; real disease. Our lives are intricately woven together physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally.
“You are what you think in your heart” And, “Where your treasure is, there will be your heart, too.” Many of us become gravely ill and many die from the ways our minds work.
NEJM “As a result, the adolescent brain is much less able to cognitively modulate strong desires and emotions. This observation is particularly relevant to the establishment of 21 years of age as the legal drinking age in the United States, a ruling that is often questioned even though a dramatic reduction in highway deaths followed its institution. One could legitimately argue that the study of the neurobiology of addiction provides a compelling argument for leaving the drinking age at 21 years and for increasing the legal smoking age to 21 years, by which time the brain networks that underlie the capacity for self-regulation are more fully formed.
The brain disease model of addiction has also informed policies that take advantage of the infrastructure of primary health care to address substance-use disorders and to provide a model for paying for it through the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) and the Affordable Care Act. Although it is still too early to evaluate the effects of these policies on the nation, an initial examination of the MHPAEA in three states showed increased enrollment and care delivery among patients with substance-use disorders and an overall reduction in spending on emergency department visits and hospital stays.” We live in a fascinating time.
“Human nature has proven to be an extremely malleable historical entity. The earliest tribal/communal societies were based on very HIGH levels of cooperation out of NECESSITY for their survival.” Lewis
A degree of camaraderie existed among Americans during WWII people longed for after the war ended.
If people were not born with an inherent bent to screw up, along with a conscience, certainly the world would be a more pleasant place. “Mom, I couldn’t be naughty today! I tried! I promise! I’m not lying! All day all I did was try to get into trouble and do stuff I’m not allowed to do, but I failed. I’m disgusted with myself, mom. I’ll try even harder tomorrow. There’s got to some way I can blow it!
If stress contributes to mental illness, I don’t think we will ever prevent it. Mankind will invent new reasons to condemn others, to fight, to disrupt, to demean, to belittle, to taunt, and to draw out the worst in others, to exploit peer pressure in order to ruin the lives of others. Lord of the Flies. Recorded history seems to me to prove beyond any doubt, that given enough rope, man will hang others and himself, no matter the circumstances. At this moment and at any given time we are 20 minutes away from destroying everything.
I like this line from Wondering Aloud, “And it’s only the giving that makes you what you are.”
I am familiar with the work of Whitaker. Am I to take a pledge that I subscribe to his opinions before offering my thoughts? I think he has much to offer. Everyone does.
“I’m trying to get you to open your mind here. If you want validation that “treatment works,” there are plenty of places you can go. I assume you came here to look at things more broadly.” mccrea
Am I supposed to qualify why I’m here to you? How do you know I should open my mind further? Why do you accuse me?
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I accused you of nothing. I simply disclosed my intentions. It appeared to me that you came her with a pre-existing viewpoint and have “attacked” others who don’t agree with you in exactly the way you are claiming others are “attacking” you. I consider it valid for people to express an opinion and to have an intention, and it is not an “attack” to me if someone expresses an opinion I don’t automatically agree with. Of course, you don’t need to justify being here. But in my experience, if one wants to actually relate to people, rather than merely irritating them, it might work better to spend more time listening and less time telling others what you think of their ideas. But of course, that’s just my viewpoint. If you want to disagree with people, you’re going to get a lot of arguments, that’s just how people are. If that’s how you want to conduct yourself, you have every right to do so. But you don’t have a right to have everyone respond supportively, especially when you don’t show them the same courtesy, IMHO. I prefer to have honest but civil exchanges of viewpoints, with each side presenting the evidence to support their views. It doesn’t have to be viewed as a “win/lose” “right/wrong” kind of thing. Maybe people just have different experiences and are sharing them with each other? Maybe no one means to “attack” you at all, but just want you to understand what has happened to them without you judging them for sharing it? Maybe you can share YOUR experience and let others know how you came to the beliefs you have? And they can do the same, and each of you will be a bit wiser for understanding the universe isn’t always the way we ourselves experience it?
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Steve
Your other comments above were very on the mark and educational.
Why resort to joking (using Mad Magazine) about the serious and courageous attempt by human beings (millions who died in these struggles) to try and design and create a classless society without any forms of exploitation?
The very definition of a stateless and classless communist society is one DEVOID of ANY forms of human exploitation.
There has NEVER been any truly communist societies YET created on the planet earth. You know this to be true.
There have been only a few serious attempts at building a “socialist” society. They only lasted, at best, possibly 30 years or so. They were viciously attacked and surrounded by hostile capitalist countries, and also had internal weaknesses related to their newness and ideological shortcomings.
So does your sarcastic humor imply that you believe that a class based profit system FILLED with multiple forms of exploitation (including the medical model) is the very best that human beings are capable of?
Richard
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My humor reflects the reality that people in any political/economic system will to a significant extent be tempted toward greed and the desire for personal power. This is what has happened throughout human history, and I’m not holding my breath for it to change anytime soon. I think Marx’s analysis of capitalism was absolutely brilliant, genius, unparalleled in any other writings before or since. I am not sure his solution is workable based on the fundamentals of human nature. And to date, history has proven my observations to be accurate.
You’re welcome to disagree with me, of course, but the real point of my comment is that psychiatry doesn’t really care who is in control, they simply want power. Or to put it another way, the problem isn’t which form of government or economic system we endorse, the problem is that we allow the exploitation of other human beings.
It is hard to see how you would twist that bit of humor into accusing me of suggesting that capitalism is the pinnacle of human achievement. The joke says that the essence of capitalism is that “man exploits man.” Do you see that as some sort of recommendation of capitalism as a superior form of economic system? That’s a pretty bizarre spin to put on a joke that clearly indicates both Capitalism and Communism (as practiced in the real world so far) to be flawed in their exploitation of human beings for power and profit. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider your political analysis of my joke. Or maybe simply file it away as a momentary attempt at humor in a very grim world.
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Writing 4.69 billion prescriptions in 2021 suggests to me that pharmaceuticals offer what millions of Americans want and may need.
I don’t see anyone pointing guns at them for not buying their products. Even more socialist countries than ours sell drugs. I doubt they lack efficacy when they are so incredibly popular and no one is forcing them to contribute a dime to obtain them. We could look at the amazing success of these companies as a sign that science is on the right track.
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You could also look at the illegal drug industry and say exactly the same thing. But we at MIA decide medical efficacy by science, not popularity. And BTW, there are PLENTY of “customers” of these drugs who are not voluntary in the least degree.
I think we can look at the amazing success of these companies, including their ability again and again to absorb multi-million dollar lawsuits, as a sign that marketing far outreaches science in terms of selling products.
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“The very definition of a stateless and classless communist society is one DEVOID of ANY forms of human exploitation.”
Wow, I haven’t quite read that in “communist” Russia’s ideology, but it sure fits. They don’t exploit human beings at all, they just ship those unworthy to Siberia, the rest have to comply, and do that willingly, finding the true soul of what it is to be human. Thus it is a stateless and classless society, those wanting to divide things up into states and classes end up in Siberia. Much more efficient that having them die on skid row.
I could list a highly communist society that is completely classless and stateless (since “someone” said they haven’t ever existed and Steve “KNOWS” this), but I wouldn’t want to bother them given such “advertisement” they are supposed to fit into. Nor do I want to be labeled as unrealistic, since those people aren’t interested in being part of the media information which would do what it does to anything it can’t get its hands on, regardless of which “ideology” is running it. They have existed for at least 30,000 years. They also could be seen as capitalistic, since they honor potential, which is what capitalism is meant to be, that those that have something to offer to the whole are rewarded for it. So anyone could say the same regarding Capitalism, that it offers anyone who is truly willing to give to the whole of society gets rewarded, making it in that essence classless, since that potential is there for anyone. But then you have what a world believing trauma is a means of mind control turns into both theories. Both communism and capitalism are just possible tools, like when you build something. I think you need more than one tool. Fighting about which is the right one only prevents them working together. That society, which is classless and everyone is honored for who they are (the first things they hear when born is “we are with you on your journey, and that’s also the last things they hear) does exist without money, but it’s dying off, their own choice: they aren’t reproducing because there’s no room left for them.
You can read the works of Marlo Morgan and see that they exist, which I’m not going to argue about, because I don’t need to, nor about the plethora of stuff that would be called impossible by both the noble “Communists” or “Capitalists,” or anyone else so full of knowing what’s possible that they know. Same as they know “mental illness” has to be a chemical imbalance because it “can’t” be anything else. Everything from how they stay healthy (knowledge of plant healing and energy modalities we either forsake or say it impossible) to their knowledge of the Universe, natural abilities we call miracles, and the very technology age old constructions around the planet we wouldn’t be able to build with our present technology they have no problem knowing is possible, stuff Tesla knew was possible and could explain quite a bit of but was suppressed by both ideologies. Aliens from other planets can visit them, which has happened at least once, without the aliens ending up in area 51 with the government trying to warp their technology to what it couldn’t even go round in circles in time resonating with, instead remaining intangible and unexploitable to the war industries. Always have and always will.
Is THAT enough for “someone” to say I’m crazy, because THAT has never happened but THIS is the way it would work. So we can again say it’s crazy for anyone to point out maybe it works differently and has been around the whole time….
And Richard YOU are the one trying to make out there are classes the way you try to intimidate Richard by turning what he said around and twisting it into such contortions it’s not recognizable as anything he said at all, as if such exploitation of ideology is a moral mask giving you the right to not actually see what someone said when it doesn’t fit your formula.
It’s called brainwashing. “Communism” and “Capitalism” are quite routined in it.gure trying to chastise a child that it still can giggle rather than to take on this facade of “activisionism and TRUE insight.”
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Steve
I’ll repeat my question:
“So does your sarcastic humor {mocking human attempts at building a classless society} imply that you believe that a class based profit system FILLED with multiple forms of exploitation (including the medical model) is the very best that human beings are capable of?”
Human societies need to have both a political and economic structure. If you choose to belittle socialist type solutions, than what system do you propose?
Steve, you say (about Marx’s socialist/communist model):
“I am not sure his solution is workable based on the fundamentals of human nature. And to date, history has proven my observations to be accurate.”
You say your “not sure”, but apparently you’re sure enough to use crude humor to mock those who have attempted to build a more equitable society.
And you use the phrase “fundamentals of human nature” as your over simplified reasoning for one reason why socialism won’t work.
What are these so called “fundamentals”? Haven’t we heard a lot about “fundamental of human nature” from the proponents of the medical model to justify their “genetic theories of original sin.”
And finally, you resort to the false argument “…And to date, history has proven my observations to be accurate.”
If human beings adopted the view that since prior “history” was unable to successfully create something new and revolutionary, therefore “it never will,” than nothing innovative and truly revolutionary would EVER be discovered.
Human nature throughout history has proven to be quite malleable, and will clearly respond to the surrounding environment with behaviors of a high degree of “cooperation” or its opposite, “aggression and greed.”
Historically, non threatening type environments with higher degrees of cooperation and egalitarianism etc. have brought out the very best of human qualities.
Can’t we learn from these examples? And isn’t it our human responsibility to try our best to find economic and political structures that will truly move humanity forward and reinforce our best qualities as a species?
Can we say that modern capitalism/imperialism has clearly become a failed experiment that threatens the very existence of the planet. If so, than we need to desperately find a new alternative. What is that alternative?
Richard
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I’ll repeat my answer, in simpler terms this time around so you can’t miss it: NO.
And yes, we do need to find an alternative.
Time to move on.
Steve
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An alternative version to the last two paragraphs of my post:
In all respect, but isn’t it implying class levels when you turn around what Steve is saying because it doesn’t fit your formula? I think you have to look at what a different outlook you’re not familiar with is saying. “Communism” and “Capitalism” (please note the quotation marks) are both routined in brainwashing, that anything not according to their formula is not the way to go about it. Steve’s sharing of a joke is a quite enlightened and effective way of going past such formulas. Anyone with perspective would see that the joke isn’t about either ideology when it’s actually honored, but regarding what comes of fundamentalism. And because it’s a joke, it needs no quotation marks. And that was the whole point of trying to bring balance into this discussion. Where the article basically says that people are mentally ill because of the very system which leaves those in charge of the system not having such “illnesses” according to the article. And this has nothing to do with them profiting off of such labels? I’m sure you could take the same formula and look at “Communist” places, and have pretty much the same results. But you might be still labeling and pushing away the same responses that actually can make change when just felt and not seen as a disease, nor pushed away as a disease.”Communists” were more overt in drugging those they found non compliant to their political ideology. “Capitalism” seems to be more covert, and this is yet another example of it. “YOU’RE making us sick, and thus WE are sick, and it’s YOUR fault,” I don’t necessarily find so empowering. In fact it’s defining a response that when NOT seen as a disease might ring in the natural instincts and intelligence that might change things…….
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“So does your sarcastic humor {mocking human attempts at building a classless society} imply that you believe that a class based profit system FILLED with multiple forms of exploitation (including the medical model) is the very best that human beings are capable of?”
One can replace “class based profit system” with numerous other phrases to make the same argument regarding “Communism.”
1) social heirarchy
2) doing things condoned by the state as being good for the all
3) fitting the status quo of communism
4) make up your own
And by the way, “Capitalism” hasn’t necessarily supported the “medical model” because if the system supporting the “profits” of the drug companies were to continue in the way it is now headed statistically, we would end up with having a society full of so many people incapacitated with their “medications” that it wouldn’t be capable of producing what it would need to continue.
Capitalism in essence is about potential, same as communism, that you get rewards by offering something that people find of value….. It’s just the rewards system is not seen as the same.
If they aren’t really offering something that is of value for the society, regardless of the system, the society in the end falls apart.
.
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Also Richard, you’re not defending Communism.
Prohibiting humor while implying that Steve said or did something he didn’t isn’t defending this placard that shall not be tarnished.
I think Steve really honors communism, although I can’t speak for him, but I don’t want to take it out of context put it on a pedestal and disable the goodness it can do.
I also DO NOT think it’s fair to people such as Miles Horton https://www.aaihs.org/myles-horton-highlander-and-the-beloved-community/ who helped both Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.
I had friends that had to play at funerals in order to survive financially. And had this story of a lady who had were underarms botoxed because otherwise she might tarnish her wedding dress. And evidently she advertised this. I had to dwell on this for a moment, when a serious concern hit me: “What if she farts!?”
It’s crude I know, but you gotta do what you gotta do…..
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I do have a lot of respect for Marx. But I also think there are lessons to be learned from the Russian experiment and other efforts at collective living and governing. Clearly, something went awry between the Proletarian Revolution and the melting away of the ruling class. What happened? Why? Was it inevitable? What can be learned from the collective farming efforts? What is worth keeping and what part of it was problematic?
I think it’s fair to say that communism AS PRACTICED in the USSR and in China most definitely devolved into something pretty oppressive, which was what the joke was really about. And sure, you can say “That’s not really communism,” but you know what I’m talking about.
The Israeli kibbutz might have come the best to emulating what Marx had in mind. What worked about that? What did not? How did they come to be slowly undermined? How can that be altered?
Communism has yet to prove itself functional in the real world. Doesn’t mean it won’t. Capitalism has certainly proven to have some very serious adverse effects on a worldwide basis. I find these effects horrifying. I’d love to find a viable solution. Just not committed to the idea that Marx has the solution. We should keep working on it!
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Richard Lewis, I am not supposed to comment anymore but I want to mention something. My angels are often telling me non nosey facts about people. They are not allowed to intrude into anyone’s privacy but one or two friendly observations are okay. I got told, for months…
“We like Richard”.
But I laughed that off since angels like EVERYBODY of sincere and polite heart. But for the last month they kept saying to me…
“He likes Bob Dylan”.
I kept looking at the comments section and thinking “who likes Bob Dylan…don’t be so stupid…nobody here likes Bob Dylan”.
But beautifully the mystery found a home just now as I checked out your brilliant melodious gorgeous song “Benzo Blue” (you tube).
Very Dylanesque, if you don’t mind me saying. What great talent you have. I am from a musical family. Music is always a bridge builder.
Anyway, if the angels got that mystery right then maybe the Hoover Dam explosion prophecy will come to pass. And also that the future does have good in it…so we mustn’t despair. We must keep dreaming our dreams with the hope of one day seeing them all take hold and bear fruit.
I must away now. I only came back to add this to you Richard.
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“who likes Bob Dylan…don’t be so stupid…nobody here likes Bob Dylan”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBNWkCsmqAY
well, maybe one 🙂
“if my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine”……… a chemical one?
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What’s one of the potential drawbacks of a capitalist system? Unchecked greed.
What’s one of the potential drawbacks of a communist or a socialist system?
Unchecked power.
What are the main drawbacks of a mental health “system”?
Unchecked power and unchecked greed.
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Steve says, “I am not sure his (Karl Marx) solution is workable based on the fundamentals of human nature.”
“….the problem isn’t which form of government or economic system we endorse, the problem is that we allow the exploitation of other human beings.”
“….psychiatry doesn’t really care who is in control, they simply want power.”
Thank you for saying these things.
I think it’s important to balance ideals will reality, meaning no matter how noble the intentions, the ugliness of human nature will inevitably rear its ugly head. There is no ultimate utopia.
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Steve says, “…people in any economic/political system will to a significant extent be tempted toward greed and the desire for personal power. This is what has happened throughout human history.”
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is” – Albert Camus
I would say, “Man is the only creature who refuses TO SEE what he is” –
Check out realism vs idealism @differencebetween.net
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Very well said!
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And what’s the potential drawback of idealism?
Unintended consequences that lead to unchecked CHAOS —
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I don’t believe that an economic system or medical practitioners in the field of psychiatry are the perpetrators of a conspiratorial assault on the masses, seeking by design to usurp authority and amass wealth per se. The mafia does. Some people do. Evil is real and it permeates our world. Egos demand their own way. Flesh craves to be satisfied. Jealousy is an old-fashioned concept, but just as influential as ever. Greed’s been around a long time, too. The modern man has been groomed and refined, but he is still the same deep within.
The United States has created the greatest economy in the history of the world. We have contributed an incalculable amount of money and materials, education resources and military protection, unprecedented in recorded history, which is why the Chinese are infusing capitalism throughout their land and are about to beat us at our own game. Just look at their investments in developing in 5G. “For the past two years, China has been at the forefront of the 5G innovations race, thanks to significant rollouts and the growth of 5G solutions. The country has built 961,000 5G base stations and 365 5G terminal connections and has shipped 128mn 5th-Generation phones.” And, get this: “China has officially launched research and development work for its 6G mobile networks. The country only just turned on its 5G networks earlier this month, ahead of an initial 2020 schedule.”
AI is where it’s at and they are killing us. In 2021, AI start-ups in China obtained US$17 billion (RMB 121 billion) in funding from private equity and venture capital investments, representing nearly one-fifth of the global total.Oct 14, 2022
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To quote Bob Marley:
“I’m sick & tired of your ISM SCHISMS….”….
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Ha! Love it! Bob Marley was a man of great wisdom!
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.
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Marie, my comments are to you. In 2015 there were 163,000 people who declined going to Bangladesh or Nicaragua or Guyana or Nepal or any other socialist state but instead those 163,000 migrants, some of them doctors, lawyers, dentists, scientists, school teachers, came to capitalist country Sweden. Were they dim to do so? In the pampered West we barely know what it is like to have no education, no rights, no food, no water, no ambitions, no dreams. Oh capitalism has its massive drawbacks. But so do the alternatives. I think, Marie, this is kind of what you were merely saying.
25 percent of Sweden is now of foreign birth. If capitalism had nothing to offer them I suppose Swedes also would be lining up to migrate away from Swedish shores. Where capitalism has darkened our collective horizon is in environmental concerns. Climate Change is upon us all, no matter where we flee to. Humanity must come together to adapt. Humanity cannot adapt without careful experimentation. New ideas for communities and societies need time and space to flourish. The best new ideas may be time honoured ancient ideas, like permaculture and giving and so on. The West has been unbelievably greedy. That has to stop. It is hard to stop greed without some form of community shaming of it. Religions used to have that role, of ethical doorkeepers, but religions themselves become infiltrated with bullying and this tends to make them the greediest of the lot.
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DW says, “It is hard to stop greed without some form of community shaming of it”.
FYI: shaming is a form of bullying. And self righteousness is another.
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Except when it is deserved. The Amish and Mennonites shame through shunning. Very powerful and useful non-violent approach for putting a lid on greed, dishonesty, selfishness, etc.
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Shame is like a scalpel, it can be used for healing to get rid of cancer or it can be weaponized. A bully weaponized anything, even a tender kiss. But shame, when used appropriately, is healthy in a community when it acts as a boundary between acceptable outward behaviour and unacceptable outward behaviour. A community will not survive long if it allows behaviour such as villany, corruption, rape, cruelty, pedophilia, etc. These outward behaviours cannot be welcomed by the community so they must be shamed by it. That is not bullying, it is protecting the vulnerable FROM bullying.
It is true that bullies may use the pain of shaming others to further there bullying agenda, but shaming in and of itself is often times healthily NEEDED and JUSTIFIED by a community. Here at MIA great efforts are made to build a boundary that shames the outward bad behaviour of psychiatry. The shaming is NEEDED to protect the vulnerable. But in the wrong hands shaming can be a ploy of a bullying group who seek to control not just unwelcome behaviour but the blameless FREE CHOICES of individuals who do no harm.
What I said before is pointing at the HEALTHY ancient tribal use of shaming that draws a clear community boundary around freedom and restriction. There does have to be some restrictions in order to define a collective or community and what they find to be their version of acceptable behaviour or unacceptable behaviour. Some indigenous people use shaming in their coaching of young children, in alerting them to behaviour that is environmentally risky to them. Shaming is powerfully protective when used appropriately. And it is sometimes used to shame the desire to be a bully. As for self righteousness I do not see why you mention it. I have not spoken about it. But if I were to I would say that there is a sharp line between how we feel within our own psyche and how we outwardly behave. A person who feels or even thinks they are special is not harmful. A person who outwardly tries to impact other people via an imperious air of self righteousness is also not harmful. A bully who outwardly uses self righteousness to control other people is straying towards being coercive. But there is some responsibility on the part of the recipient to not be so easily led or pesuaded unless they are young or naive in some way.
This whole comment section is wonderfully impassioned and lively and it is so healthy to see many alternative visions with no one dream dominating. A community that only outlaws rape, sexual abuse, gross bullying and cruelty, but accepts everything else is a very liberating space to be in.
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bart,
Shaming and shunning are emotional abuse. And emotional abuse is not, in any way, “non-violent”. And it is never “deserved”. It is silenced violence.
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DW says, “It is hard to stop greed without some form of community shaming of it.”
FYI: shaming is a form of bullying –
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bart says, “I don’t believe that an economic system or medical practitioners in the field of psychiatry are the perpetrators of a conspiratorial assault on the masses, seeking by design to usurp authority and amass wealth, per se.”
Well it may not be the psychiatrists, per se, but I wouldn’t put it past the drug companies. And some people actually believe we have a ‘medical mafia’ of sorts here in the USA, which I think is a reasonable comparison. And, btw, it helps to remember that only seeing literal definitions is quite limiting. But if the thought of conspiratorial thinking triggers you, may I suggest you at least try to consider the reality of subliminal indoctrination. And as for 5G, AI, and mental health matters, I’m not seeing the correlation, unless you’re referring to economic exploitation —
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The DSM III was specifically and intentionally designed to make psychiatry seem more “scientific” and claims of “biological causation” were intended to do the same. Its own creators admit this.
“While the successive framers of the DSM have attempted to base it on scientific evidence, political and economic factors have also shaped the conceptualization of mental illness. These economic and institutional forces have reinforced the DSM’s use of a medical model in understanding psychopathology. Though the scientific evidence for a medical model is mixed and evidence for other types of conceptualizations have been given less attention, the medical model provides for reliable diagnoses that allot diverse benefits to treatment providers and researchers, as well as to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-psychiatry/article/abs/influence-of-corporate-and-political-interests-on-models-of-illness-in-the-evolution-of-the-dsm/EBDA0C7701E89B6C85B28FA4A34EE4F8
“During our interview, Spitzer mentioned openly, almost proudly, that one of the reasons he pushed for adoption of the term “disorder” for conditions such as anxiety was that it eliminated psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as treatment options. He added that opponents of the change could have mounted a legitimate defense if they’d spotted a key discrepancy with the ICD system, where the term “anxiety neurosis” was still included, in ways that made the DSM change look arbitrary and loaded. And he openly acknowledged that the addition of new conditions to the DSM was in part “a function of ‘Do you have a treatment’? If you have a treatment, you’re more interested in getting the category in” (qtd. in Shyness 75). Such pressure from drug-makers and their academic sponsors highlights a cart-before-the-horse dynamic often borne out by the DSM-III papers, as in the above linking of Panic Disorder to Upjohn Pharmaceuticals.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/side-effects/201601/the-problem-heroizing-robert-spitzer
It was about competition for market share with various therapists/counselors/support groups, and psychiatry could only claim primacy if they promoted the one product they could offer that others could not, which was drug prescriptions. So they designed the DSM to be “atheoretical” (meaning none of the “diagnoses” were concerned with WHY that person acted/felt/thought that way) and left the “theory” to be filled in by those applying the “diagnoses.” This left the door wide open for unscientific claims that because drugs affected people’s moods and behavior, these “disorders” must be caused by brain abnormalities, even though the DSM specifically avoided saying any such thing (knowing there was and continues to be scant scientific evidence to even suggest such a thing might be true). It worked a treat, especially with the massive marketing assistance they received from the drug companies, who could see a bonanza coming their way. What is better than a chronic condition which has no identifiable cause but which can be “treated” with drugs for the rest of a person’s life?
So it doesn’t have to be a “conspiracy,” merely a capitalistic coming together of financial and guild interests, which neatly dovetailed with a society who was anxious for an “explanation” for the vast emotional distress that citizens of more industrialized countries seemed to be experiencing, without having to question the basic assumptions of such a society’s status quo.
The DSM was not and will never be a scientific document. It was at first a list of billing codes, but Spitzer and the DSM-III committee turned it into a political document that intentionally redefined “mental illness” as a medical problem treatable by doctors and drugs. That decision was made intentionally and had nothing to do with the eventual well being of the clients. It had to do with psychiatry’s bid for domination over the less expensive and frankly more effective (though the bar is VERY low) therapeutic approaches that were threatening to take away their client base.
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I hope I answered this in my comment of Nov 11th at 5 ish am. Any human behaviour can be used as bullying.
Sex.
Caring.
Love.
Imposed helpfullness or lecturing.
Any behaviour.
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“And some people actually believe we have a ‘medical mafia’ of sorts here in the USA, which I think is a reasonable comparison.”
A doctor walks into a Police station and provides police with the murder weapon, the place the body has been disposed of, and a full and unconditional confession. What do you think happens?
The doctor is told by the ‘medical mafia’ that she needs a “sophisticated knowledge of the law” (means, opportunity, but no motive). Police dig up the wrong body and find “insufficient evidence”. And the government passes Euthanasia Laws because of the problem of ‘joint enterprise’ (the equivalent of RICO laws in the U.S.).
I note the similarity to the problem faced by Himmler when Josef Hartinger investigated the deaths of two Jews at Dachau. Bury the report, and pass laws allowing ‘citizens’ to be executed for their ‘potential’ for damage to the State?
“Potential for violence, but no actual history or clear intent”………. Chemical restraint administered before questioning? Hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness is more likely to produce the desired answers (particularly combined with an ‘acute stress reaction’ ie a few swift kicks to the head…. and of course the loaded pistol), and provide confirmation of the ‘verballed’ statement guiding the interrogators (“refused to answer re substance abuse” [a beating with the chemical kosh may be required]).
Tough to get good help these days.
Amazing how they get lost in the acts of torture for the sake of torture. “tormentis cruciatibus causa” From the entrance of the Ariel Castro Memorial Hospital.
Fortunately the public is not looking too hard at what is occurring ‘over the fence’, preferring instead the “edited” versions of events put forward by the ‘mafia’ (who will ‘fuking destroy’ you and your family if you dare try and complain)
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Birdsong, I would rather shame a child sex abuser and be called a bully than nonchalantly look away at what is going on in our communities.
Birdsong, you have a way of saying “DW says” that I find just a bit gladiatorial. Perhaps I am over sensitive. That is possible given that I am emotional. Birdsong with calm politeness I must ask please refrain from replying to my comments if you dont mind. I ask graciously.
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No it isn’t. Avoiding someone isn’t threatening them with bodily harm.
Capitalism has nothing to do with mental illness, per se. I don’t have to allow myself to be oppressed. Shoveling someone’s driveway for something in return doesn’t force me to take on the role of an exploited person and hiring someone to shovel my driveway doesn’t make me an oppressor.
If I want to afford shelter, food, sanitation, clothing, etc., I am going to find a way to get them through work. Thank God for so many opportunities to earn what is necessary to survive. It isn’t your responsibility to take care of me or I you.
Banks provide capital to those who are likely to repay loans. There’s nothing wrong or oppressive in and of itself with that. To maintain our current standard of living, we must compete with nations around the world to make a better mousetrap for less.
“Well it may not be the psychiatrists, per se, but I wouldn’t put it past the drug companies.” How? No one can force me to believe something/anything. I have choices. Buyer beware. Mixed with chemical combinations that help people are plenty of con-artists who take advantage of others. Time has shown that the majority of pharmaceuticals are helpful taken as prescribed. Aspirin is more deadly than many drugs. A toxic dose of aspirin is 200 to 300 mg/kg (milligrams per kilogram of body weight), and ingestion of 500 mg/kg is potentially lethal. In chronic overdose a lower level of aspirin in the body can result in serious illness. Much lower levels can affect children.”
I wouldn’t put it past almost anyone to do almost anything.
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You are operating at a level of privilege that allows you to ignore the fact that others don’t always “have a choice” like you do. “I don’t have to allow myself to be oppressed” sounds very New Age, but being born black or female or poor or in a third-world nation where multinational companies extract all of our resources and pay people pennies a day to work and there are no other employment options available is not a choice for those people. I’m guessing you’re privileged enough to insist on the ultimate privilege, the privilege of pretending you don’t have privilege and that others are suffering simply because they are too lazy to “insist” on becoming “unoppressed.” I hope you are able to open your mind and realize how incredibly FORTUNATE you are to be able to believe you “don’t have to allow yourself to be oppressed.” A lot of the world doesn’t have that option.
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bart says, “No it isn’t (violent). Avoiding someone isn’t threatening them with bodily harm.”
Shaming and shunning ARE violent. But that doesn’t mean not avoiding abusive people, or that criminal behavior not be dealt with appropriately.
I recommend googling “different types of violence” and tapping on the wellnessbeam.org link. It lists TEN types of violence. Or tap on “The Practice of Shunning and Its Consequences” from sedaa.org. You just might learn something.
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Steve says, “It (the medicalization of the DSM) had to do with psychiatry’s bid for domination over less expensive and frankly more effective (though the bar is VERY low) therapeutic approaches that were threatening to take away their client base.”
This isn’t medicine. It’s GREED —
And I heard this happened after the allied psy-professionals were finally permitted to work without a psychiatrist’s supervision, which caused psychiatrists to panic —
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Marie says, “This article is almost funny.”
I wish I found it funny, but to me it’s mostly irritating. Reading it reminds me of the saying, “The operation was successful, but the patient died”. And this happens a lot (in more ways than one) in psychiatry.
The authors need to ask themselves what their definition of “mental illness” is and where they found it. Better yet, they should ask themselves why they consider feeling understandably miserable a “mental illness”, and then ask themselves how’d they’d feel if capitalism didn’t reward THEM —
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What’s capitalism’s biggest drawback?
It can take unfair advantage of vulnerable people, and people are miserable when they’re taken advantage of. But for some reason, this obvious fact eludes most “mental health” workers —
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I am happy to pay others to relieve my suffering.
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How much ya got?
Because where I live refusing to pay for others to relieve what they think is your suffering (Especially when they are aware of the balance of your bank account. Your anasognosia means you lack insight into your suffering. You might think your mentally healthy but …….. that’s not a decision you get to make, so I found out) can result in some serious damage to your health and well being. Which will then require them to ‘treat’ you until your wallet is empty and insurance runs out.
Once your wallet is empty, your complaining is the ‘illness’ and you are deemed beyond help.
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Vincent Van Gogh would disagree. Winston Churchill, too. The Lincoln’s, Mike Wallace, Mike Tyson, Kirsten Dunst. The 39-year-old actor has revealed that when she was in her 20s, she entered a rehab center for help with depression. …
Dwayne Johnson
Katy Perry
Jon Hamm
Lady Gaga.
Michael Phelps.
Kristen Bell.
Bruce Springsteen
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Ah, rehab centers are for drug and alcohol use, I believe.
I see your Dwayne Johnson, and I raise you Ernest Hemmingway, Marilyn Monroe, Stevie Nix, Jordan Peterson, Robin Williams, Michael Jackson. I could go on. All of the above were massively failed by psychiatry and report being damaged by their “help”. Some even died. Hemmingway’s famous line, “The operation was a success, but we lost the patient!” was in reference to receiving electroshock therapy. He committed suicide.
There are lots of people (including me) who have struggled with difficult emotional experiences, including feeling suicidal. That doesn’t mean the system will be of help to them. Perhaps it’s time to stop writing and start reading some of the many testimonials available here. Admittedly, it’s a skewed sample, but to claim that psychiatry is “there to help” seems a bit of a stretch, especially after reading the recent article referring to a study of psychiatric inpatient “treatment!”
Try to open your mind to others’ experiences. This website exists for a very good reason, and it’s not to make people like you feel uncomfortable. There are a lot of stories out there that you may not want to hear, but perhaps you NEED to hear them anyway.
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I disagree.
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So noted.
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Oh, I forgot about Del Shannon:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-01-29-me-77-story.html
A shame that “stigma” kept him from getting the help he needed! Oh, wait! He DID get the highest quality psychiatric care available. And killed himself a few weeks later. Now THAT’S a psychiatric treatment success story!
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bart,
I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting the people on your list. Have you???
In any case, I don’t consider famous people’s experiences to be any more valid than my own.
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Neither do I. No. Never met any of them.
I wasn’t saying their experiences were more valid than others’. I listed a few who are well known because what they say can be confirmed easily.
Why are we limited in replying to others? Often, I see a comment I’d like to respond to, but there is no “reply” opportunity.
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It seemed to me you were selecting your examples with a bias toward making your point, and by selecting and mentioning them, you seem to be suggesting they are more valid. I showed that by creating a similar list of psychiatric disaster stories from people just as famous. Why did you select those and not others? Your comments also seem to imply that having a “diagnosis” means needing “treatment” and that the “treatment” in question will generally work. Have you take the time to read Whitaker’s book yet? Have you taken the time to read some of the comments and articles from survivors of the psych system? Try reading the recent podcast regarding a psychologist studying what happens to people who are exposed to “involuntary treatment.” Her commentary on her OWN forced “treatment” as a teen and a young adult is CHILLING. I only wish it surprised me.
I’m trying to get you to open your mind here. If you want validation that “treatment works,” there are plenty of places you can go. I assume you came here to look at things more broadly. There are very FEW sites where survivors can share their stories of what DOESN’T work about the system without being attacked or censored. This is such a place.
The “Reply” button sometimes disappears when you get too many comments in the same thread. You just go back to the last one that has a “reply” button and it will appear at the bottom of the comments currently approved.
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It’s quite amazing you would know whether Van Gogh and Winston Churchill would disagree, albeit that being a generic response from the mental health system that they can fix up people who fortunately are beyond their reach (listed as deceased), and statistically are helping to create more people who become deceased with their treatments, it still requires the real voice of those they say they are fixing up. You are free to have either one come and express their disagreement, and post this anywhere online.
Further more, if the whole Royal family decided to get mental health treatment this still doesn’t mean that it’s working. Any list of people in the public eye, and behaving in a way to maintain their image, get points on corporate media for going along with what’s being promoted there, this is more expressive of the game theory going on that there’s loss if they don’t take mainstream methods that would give them points, because they loose their public image. It remains statistically true that the mental health system rather than decreasing mental illness has increased it, that their story of treating chemical imbalance has never been proven, that they even have pretty much given up on being able to prove it, and in the meantime true science says that they are causing chemical imbalance with their pharmacological treatments. In short that their medications cause chemical imbalance has been proven, it’s not alleged, in contrast to that they treat chemical imbalance. That is what the general public ends up being treated with or often forced to endure, and the result is an epidemic, not a lessening of the occurrence.
The whole lifestyle of a group of people that if their lifestyle was transposed to the general public would cause impossible stress on the whole system of resources of this planet, they don’t represent the general public at all. Certainly not statistically, no matter how many points they get, or how good it makes them feel to get points from “the mental health system.”
Lady Gaga by the way has said that although she ended up taking anti-depressants that that is one thing she wouldn’t recommend.
And again, statistics themselves disagree with whether the current mainstream trends in mental health treatment are effective, hauling out a number of people who as a minority did feel they got help, whether they are famous or whether they are another part of the minority, this doesn’t change the statistics, it only points out more why the mental health system doesn’t work, and that they aren’t looking at the results in a realistic way regarding whether their methods are truly working. Instead they suppress other methods that are effective. No amount of drug company profits are going to change that.
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Winston Churchill suffered from what he called his “black dog” or those occasions when he was nearly incapacitated from depressive thoughts and feelings.
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So what? Who says he’d have been better off seeing the psychiatrist? Marilyn Monroe, Del Shannon, Stevie Nicks, Jordan Peterson, and Ernest Hemmingway, among others, certainly were not.
And Edison was a classic “ADHD” kid who was kicked out of school and his mom told he was “incorrigible.” Mom knew better and educated him at home and he became one of our greatest inventors and marketers of new ideas. Would he have been better off being “diagnosed” and “treated” in his youth?
Depression exists. People get depressed. Nothing new. Drugs can be used to alter people’s emotional reality. Also nothing new. Giving drugs to people without having a clue what is wrong with them and hoping that some of the spaghetti sticks to the wall when tossed is hardly an impressive medical approach. Proving that people have issues doesn’t prove they are medical problems, and CERTAINLY doesn’t prove that drugs are the answer.
Actually, long-term studies on antidepressants, stimulants, and antipsychotics have shown that NONE of these drugs improve long-term outcomes on the average, and that’s from studies mostly TRYING to prove they work. Read Whitaker’s work and see what you think afterwards.
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I’m afraid there is no science behind the medical model, either. Not one of the DSM “diagnoses” has a legitimate, objective way to differentiate it from a “normal” person, let alone differentiate those WITHIN the “diagnosed” group on the basis of what is CAUSING the problems.
The DSM itself says this: “In DSM, there is no assumption that each category of mental disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries dividing it from other mental disorders or no mental disorder.” It also says that, “There is also no assumption that all individuals described as having the same. mental disorder are alike in all important ways.”
What do these two admissions mean? First, they are saying that they can’t tell which category a person fits into, they could fit into more than one category, and there is also no way to tell with any certainty if a person even has a disorder or not.
Second, and perhaps more important, the second comment says that even if two people fit the same diagnosis, center of the target, same symptoms etc., it doesn’t mean they necessarily have anything of significance in common with each other.
So in other words, any person “diagnosed” with a “mental disorder” is so diagnosed subjectively, with vague and undefinable boundaries deciding whether they do or don’t “fit the criteria.” AND any person diagnosed with a particular “disorder” may have nothing in common with another person having the same “disorder” diagnosed, meaning the “diagnosis” doesn’t even tell you what kind of “treatment” they would need.
Of course, everyone ignores this and pretends we somehow “know” that all “mental disorders” are caused by “biochemical/neurobiological” problems with the brain. Does that sound scientific to you?
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In response to “Brenda Schaeffer” If you are going to accuse “someone” on this site of accusing parents of being the blame for their children’s behavior in class when they can’t control themselves, you haven’t stated who that person is.
Further more, listing someone as anti-pharma again without stating what he has reported, this is labeling someone without backing it up.
THAT is your brand of science?
Such and such fixes a situation, anyone pointing out what contrary results are is either
1) not helping anyone
2) blocking anyone who argues against the evidence that of the ineffectiveness of the treatment
3)only allowing that anti-whatever-is-supposed-to-be-fixing-the-problem, whether it does or not
4)failing or lacking in funds to continue
5) behaving in a fascist authoritarian way
You also share precognition of whether Bob is going to continue underwriting this site, as if you know him personally or have other insights. Are there any other predictions you want to make while trying to ridicule the people here as not being able to help anyone? That isn’t the case at all. You only have to read what’s reported here. If people aren’t being helped by their “medications” and they can’t express that without being accused of being non compliant or a danger to themselves or others; when what they in reality are doing is giving themselves the space and information to find out what could help them beyond mainstream methods; when they might need to know whether getting away from a disabling agent would work for them, then YOU aren’t going to find out if it does or not while accusing those wanting to find evidence of whether a different method might work of the five above listed accusations. And those are just five. The same as people that keep their own lives contrary to what a dictator or authoritarian system would do do not start sharing what is effective for them when they can’t without such accusations and thus could be imprisoned as non conforming. This should answer the questions you bring up here regarding this site https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/11/capitalism-whats-destroying-collective-mental-health/#comment-202724 I don’t see that 225 to250 dollars per session supplies such freedom https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/brenda-schaeffer-minneapolis-mn/54111 nor having a whole website https://www.brendaschaeffer.com/ and books and retreats….. No that doesn’t secure safety for people to heal that might be threatened with the kind of accusations you’ve displayed.
You can read here on this site numerous very clear analyses of what psychiatric medications can do that the drug companies don’t report, what the statistics are regarding recovery when they are involved, how their implementation corresponds with the current spike in mental illness. All from grounded scientific evidence. And then more scientific evidence pointing out that it’s not alleged that psychiatric medications cause chemical imbalance but it still remains only alleged that they treat them, in fact the drug companies have stopped looking to try to prove such allegations for the most part, and as yet haven’t supplied any conclusive evidence.
Someone who reports this regarding the medications used for children that are deemed out of control, and how those medications could not be effective, and does this with scientific evidence (which Robert Whitaker’s books also supply) this is reporting that, that isn’t blaming anything on parents. In fact those two things are separate, if that is even what you are going on about. Since you make statements without referring to who they are about as well as accusations of blaming parents without how that was done, and then saying someone is anti-pharma without again stating what that person has said, and then implying you know how long this site is going to last, who is supporting it financially as well as. Then you go on about whether this site helps people, stating that: “They don’t know what to do for the severely depressed, the suicidal, the manic and schizophrenics who are desperately seeking a bit of relief from their torment,” while simply reading through the material on this site, the stories, would tell you the truth that this site does help many people. Beyond that there are many people who wouldn’t be allowed to express that what this site reports has helped them, because the mental health system could label them as non-compliant and force them on the very treatments that they got away from that weren’t helping them. That also you can read numerous reports of on this site, again regarding your question in another “post” regarding what’s authoritarian or fascist.
No, simply reporting scientific evidence against drugs that cause chemical imbalance, are reported to do the opposite, that statistically have caused an increase in what they are said to heal, and also are highly addictive with all the problems there as well: withdrawal symptoms and side effects — reporting that isn’t anti-pharm, that’s pointing out what kind of problems the pills could cause or have caused.
Reporting evidence, also possibly of scientific material put out by the drug companies themselves but can logically be interpreted differently to be contrary to their claims, this wouldn’t be blaming anyone’s parents either (nor anything or anyone else you’re accusing such open mindedness of doing), but exposing what could end up not being helpful to these children, although it is sold and promoted as being helpful. When it’s said that the problem isn’t the parents because putting attention on something else fixes it when otherwise the parents might be blamed, when there’s problems pointed out with what “something else” really does when implemented as a mendicant to the situation this in no way is blaming the parents. As much as it avoids really looking at what “something else” is really doing for those invested in it, saying that blame is put on the parents because “something else” is questioned is not true. That something else would have to actually fix the problem.
Yes medications are supposed to promote healing, but when they don’t do that, to report the scientific and statistical evidence behind their possible ineffectiveness isn’t some war on medications, it’s promoting the truth rather than handing someone a pill because they are made out to be healing tools, and then disregarding whether they do that or not.
Reporting the scientific truth regarding psychiatric medications when they aren’t effective, or even against what they are said to accomplish, this isn’t anti-pharma, that’s pro-healing, pro-science and pro truth and intelligence. As well as reporting what might get in the way of brain health.
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POSTING AS MODERATOR:
It occurs to me that posters in the MIA community are ALSO a group, and I have unintentionally allowed slanderous generalizations about that group, as Nijinsky so powerfully reminds me. In the future, any comments about the MIA community of commenters will be moderated as generalizations about a group based on their membership in the group.
Nijinsky is also correct that any allegation of an inappropriate comment should be specific, and actually needs to be referred to me as moderator, rather than to the community as a whole. In an effort to be fair, I have allowed violations of the Guidelines, and will be correcting that mistake in the future.
Any criticisms need to be of specific ideas, not of the MIA community as a whole. It is acceptable to critique MIA as an organization, but not groups of individuals who contribute to it, especially in such a generalized manner.
Thanks to Nijinsky for reminding me of this requirement.
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Shunning and shaming are meant to be harmful.
This is evil intent.
Avoidance is not shunning; it’s self-protection and self-preservation. This is not evil intent.
And prisons aren’t meant to destroy human beings; they’re built to to protect society.
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To a large degree, the U.S. is a socialist nation. Most of our economy is regulated, inspected by, and controlled through our government. To the extent that the “free” market is allowed, we have built a paradise compared to most of the rest of the world. Capitalism, without any restraint, runs wild like a bull. With a proper balance of oversight, we are the only country giving hundreds of billions to the third world, lifting the impoverished out of extraordinary poverty and subsistence.
You are absolutely correct. No system is perfect. True religion, when embraced in word and deed, is the best remedy known to mankind to limit the evils perpetrated by the power hungry who can and will destroy every economy in time.
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Van Scnassin says, “True religion, when embraced in word and deed, is the best remedy known to mankind to limit the evils perpetrated by the power hungry who can and will destroy every economy in time.”
Really? And how would you define a “true religion”? And, bye the bye, could there possibly be any “untrue religions” out there? And how would you know the difference?
Somehow , I find “embracing” oxymorons a waste of time.
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What do you recommend?
Pure religion is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.
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But you haven’t answered my second and third questions: are there any ‘untrue’ or ‘impure’ religions out there? And how are these different from ‘true’ and ‘pure’ religions? And as for ‘unspotted’—good grief! What does that even mean?
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I can’t reply to Birdsong except to respond to myself and hope it will find its rightful place.
I suppose there are. I couldn’t tell you how they are all different. I don’t know all of them.
Unspotted, to me, means to not to buy into the notion that I can find peace and wholeness through acquiring things or achieving more than the next guy, or that my life consists of externals. My relationship with God is what matters.
What do you recommend?
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Bart says, “Unspotted, to me, means to not buy into a notion that I can find peace and wholeness through acquiring things or achieving more than the next guy, or that my life consists of externals. My relationship with God is all that matters.”
I think your definition of ‘unspotted’ is a basic tenet of (all?) major religions.
I looked up a definition for religion and picked out this one from Britannica: human beings’ relation to that which they regard as holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or worthy of special reverence. It is also commonly regarded as consisting of the way people deal with ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death. In many traditions, this relation and these concerns are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitude toward gods or spirits; in more humanistic or naturalistic forms of religion, they are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitudes toward the broader human community or the natural world…
I think organized religions do a lot of good, but too often their message or purpose gets lost in dogma. I don’t care if someone is religious or not, or whether or not they have a belief in a supernatural being. What matters to me are their attitudes toward and treatment of others, which I hope are grounded in respect, compassion, kindness, honesty and trustworthiness.
But this is where things get tricky, because the values of religion or spirituality run counter to the goals of capitalism. But some people believe capitalism is the most moral of economic systems because (according to them) its goal is to create wealth and prosperity for all and is completely voluntary, which is why it’s referred to as the free market economy.
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I found a great example of an “impure religion”:
PSYCHIATRY.
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The way the world is so vast means that no political or religious establishment can entirely govern all nine billion people on it. No one way has THE TRUTH or has ALL THE ANSWERS. But each diverse way has a PART of the truth and has part of all the answers. The globe is so vast it can house such diversity of choice so that if a person loves lovely socialism they can find it and live that way, and if a person loves lovely capitalism they can find it and live that way. A problem occurs when some people in a political establishment or religion want to take over the whole globe and tell other people that they cannot be belonging to a political establishment or religion dear to their hearts.
The way the world is means that in nature there are ideal continents for particular animals to find optimal nourishment and habitats for their choice of place or beliefs. A sad looking wombat in a zoo in a different landscape is a sorry looking sight.
We are not all supposed to be the same. Difference is written into the vastness. So that no one way will ever become the dominant way for very long. There will always be detractors of capitalism and detractors of socialism. There will always be ice in some landscapes and desert sand in other landscapes. It is written into Gaia that multitudinous differences make up holostic Oneness. Ponder the rudimentary sponge. I was reading last night of it in Thomas Halliday’s beautiful book “Otherworlds”. He says that the sea sponge is an ancient colony made up of individual cells. A collective. He says that if you put a sponge in a food mixer and reduce it to a blended mush none of the individuals will perish, indeed they will reassemble into a collective formed from the individuals again. The individuals are all different yet they make up the entirety.
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bart –
I forgot to answer your question as to what I would recommend.
I don’t know that I know enough about anything to recommend anything other than what you’re doing already, which seems to be exploring or searching for ideas and answers that make sense to you.
But on second thought, I do recommend trying to have an open mind, because while this can make things more challenging, it also might help make your efforts more fruitful. But only you can be the judge of that.
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Steve says, “Proving that people have issues doesn’t prove they have medical problems, and CERTAINLY doesn’t prove that drugs are the answer.”
And psychiatrists who refuse to acknowledge this are proving they have no integrity, which makes them grand mal narcissists, and they’re being grand mal is the only thing medical about psychiatry
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What Steve says is true, no matter psychiatry’s brainless “checklists” –
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….”grand mal narcisissts”?….wtf? OH!, yeah! lol
ROTFLMFAO
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Van Scnassin says, “To a large degree, the U.S. is a socialist nation. Most of our economy is regulated, inspected by, and controlled through our government.”
Very true, and in many ways, this is all to the good. Take social security, enacted in 1935 by President Roosevelt, and the many other subsequent social and environmental programs enacted since then, like the Medicare and Medicaid act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, and National Environmental Program Act in 1970 which Richard Nixon helped create.
Private enterprise is not all bad, and centralized government is not all good.
A video worth watching: “Thomas Sowell – – Basic Economics”, from the Hoover Institution
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Worth a glimpse: Gallery: “Why Nixon Created the EPA”,
Alexis C. Madrigal, from The Atlantic,
Worth another glimpse: “The Nixon plan: The forgotten national catastrophic health insurance plan could still be a model” by Ed Dolan from salon.com
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And the Affordable Care Act under President Obama enacted in 2010
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The ACA ought to be called the NSA, the “not-so-affordable” health care act.
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You are on target, Marie. Our economy and our freedoms under our democratic republic are by far the greatest of all time. We are the envy of the world. People from around the world have flocked to this country for the myriad economic opportunities, our laws, our judicial system, free speech, our education system, our constitution and the safety our law enforcement provides for us all.
We are a nation set upon a hill, a light, a beacon, projecting strength and the means for anyone to improve her lot in life.
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bart,
I googled “the purpose of religion” and found this from verywellmind.com: “What Is Religion? The Psychology of Why People Believe”.
I thought you might find it interesting.
And I agree with your definition of unspotted, meaning I also think it’s important to not place material values over spiritual ones, although I don’t think believing in a supernatural being is necessary to do this. But if believing in God helps someone, that’s fine with me. So while I’m not necessarily a believer in a particular god, I try to be a believer in good.
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You make a lot of sense Marie. I enjoy your comments. Please do more!
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This website is for those who are willing to view psychiatry differently.
“Posting Guidelines
What is the intention behind the comments and forums?
Mad In America serves as a community forum for those interested in rethinking psychiatric care. We aspire to make this space rich with a diversity of voices and experiences.”
Well, that sounds wonderful.
I don’t understand the brain very well. No one does, imo. It is the most complex entity in the known universe. Three convoluted pounds of gel with trillions of nerve connections.
We, with diverse backgrounds, are invited to share our thoughts on psychiatry if we are willing to reexamine the status quo of the “medical model”. If I get the gist, that involves using chemicals to treat non-existent, man-made, for profit, unreliable/sham diagnoses that often injure and kill those who have been tricked into buying them. No differences between this approach and drug dealers. Buying contaminated, illegal heroin on the street equals selling drugs developed by scientists under the scrutiny of government regulators and lawyers seeking to make hundreds of millions of dollars through lawsuits against said industry. Psychiatrists and major pharmaceutical manufacturers are responsible, and those who hope to feed on their gravy train. They are joined in a symbiotic, for profit, drug-cartel like subterfuge comparable to organized crime. No psychiatrist has been convicted of any crime along these lines of which I’m aware.
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“Rethinking” does not mean what you said here at all. It means having an open mind. I personally would appreciate you not intentionally interpreting what is going on here. If you want others to welcome your viewpoint, you need to allow that others’ viewpoints might also have validity. Otherwise you are asking of others something you are not willing to grant.
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Oh, Brenda, Brenda…. I’m so glad you decided to continue your post-High School education, de-indoctrination, and de-programming here at MiA.
You have come to the right place, my friend.
First, “the brain”, as you call it, is NOT a discrete human bodily organ, as the pancreas, or spleen, liver, lungs, etc…. What we call “the brain”, is merely the neuronal mass contained within the skull. The human body has 4 nervous systems, & 4 fluid systems. There are more neurons in the gut, than in the brain. MOST so-called “neurochemicals” are made in the gut, not the brain.
A TRUE “chemical imbalance of the brain” is scientifically impossible.
Actually, MANY psychiatrists HAVE BEEN CONVICTED of all sorts of crimes. Psychiatry has insinuated itself into our legal system, via HUGE payments from PhRMA to Congress & other politicians.
I have already here given you weeks of supporting research for your continued edification. Any of Mr. Robert Whitaker’s, or Dr. Peter Breggin’s books are also excellent primers to begin to free your enslaved mind.
WELCOME to MiA!
(click on any commenter’s name, to review their comment history….
Bill Bradford
aka
The King of Keene
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Can you please elaborate further about capitalism as political philosophy and the difference between the machinery of banking and banked knowledge production that generates truth? The nature by which the academy(s) operate? Mental Health/Mental Illness may not be an expression of a singular pathway, but rather a rich networks dances between the unconscious attempting to process and interact with the consciousness of what be an internal and even eternal question. The complexiities of the discourse might even be falsely held within the language of advocating/peers and so forth. Where is the imagination that leans toward an economy(s) that embraces LIFE?
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“This article is almost funny….I wish MIA would no longer publish articles like this, which are ideological, show little insight and have only a marginal connection to mental health.”
I say:”What’s so funny about peace , love, and understanding.?”
Of course, capitalism was an advance over feudalism, but that does NOT mean we shouldn’t take a cold hard look at the state of the modern capitalist/imperialist world.
You say: “Under capitalism in the United States children are educated and most people have health care and housing.”
The United States has LESS THAN 5% of the worlds’ population. Tell me where and how did this country accumulate all its wealth to create such a high standard of living? Have you ever heard about imperialist domination of Third World countries and their natural resources and cheap labor?
You say: “Were conditions better under Mao…”
Well frankly, if one could ask the people living under British controlled feudalism how it compared to life in China during Mao’s last 30 years of life. The average life span of a Chinese person DOUBLED between the 1949 successful socialist revolution, and when Mao died in 1977.
Yes, China today is a very repressive state capitalist government and system competing for world dominance with other Eastern and Western imperialist powers.
Where is YOUR nuance when it comes to analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the very first socialist systems historically attempted in a world where they were surrounded by hostile capitalist powers hell bent on their imminent destruction? Why can’t systems built upon “cooperation, peace, love, and understanding” be made to work for the betterment of human kind?
We live in a capitalist/imperialist dominated world where mental health systems in EVERY country are part of the status quo that both reinforces and uses an oppressive medical model as a critical institution for the “powers that be” to maintain power and control over the masses.
I am GLAD that MIA chooses to have articles that deeply contextualizes the current state of the medical model.
Richard
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Capitalism certainly has had some evil aspects but no more evil than that found in some of the societies you believe the capitalists oppressed. You ask! “ Why can’t systems built upon “cooperation, peace, love, and understanding” be made to work for the betterment of human kind?”. What systems have been built upon cooperation, peace, love, etc? Humans are filled with love, but also with hate, envy, a desire to dominate, and all sorts of other evil traits. And those despicable traits are dominant throughout history and in all sorts of systems.
So that’s what’s funny about this article: It is simplistic.
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Marie, you say: “Humans are filled with love, but also with hate, envy, a desire to dominate, and all sorts of other evil traits. And those despicable traits are dominant throughout history and in all sorts of systems.”
Yes, human beings are capable of both very loving and compassionate behaviors, as well as, selfish and violent behaviors. Are you therefore presenting some sort of “genetic” justification for us to accept exploitation and oppression as a fact of life we must ALWAYS live with?
Human nature has proven to be an extremely malleable historical entity. The earliest tribal/communal societies were based on very HIGH levels of cooperation out of NECESSITY for their survival.
Our ultimate goal in rebuilding the world as a better place to live, is to design an economic and political environment that brings out, and reinforces, the very best qualities of the human species, AND diminishes (over time) the more negative qualities.
Capitalism by its very nature AND design is built upon a hierarchical structure of unequal classes and inherent exploitation of one class over another. The working classes are NEVER paid the full value of the labor they create. They often live in the barest of subsistence levels of survival, and ultimately are made to fight (and die for) wars of political and economic domination over other nations and peoples.
Socialism (by design) is an attempt to build a society that (over time) can eliminate all class oppression and forms of exploitation. Socialist experiments on this planet are LESS THAN 200 years old. New and emerging societies on this magnitude CANNOT be expected to succeed on their very first attempts.
Without referring to human genetics, please explain to me what is inherently wrong with the theoretical model of a socialist society?
Richard
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And BTW, Marie. you used the phrase “…and all sorts of other evil traits,” to describe certain human behaviors.
These behaviors are NOT “evil” – they are ADAPTIVE behaviors that arise when human beings are placed in a highly competitive and often threatening environment. Sometimes certain of these behaviors can be quite necessary and helpful for survival in a very hostile environment.
I don’t think you would be calling the socially unacceptable (and quite often self-defeating) behaviors that get labeled as “mental illness,” – “evil.”
Are they not “adaptive” behaviors to a very stressful and often traumatic world?
Richard
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Comedian Bill Maher thinks being politically conservative is a personality trait. I tend to agree with him.
But it doesn’t explain why so many privileged capitalist-haters have such huge chips on their shoulders.
An interview worth listening to: Fareed Zaharia with Bill Maher on why U.S. democracy is at stake on CNN Audio. Air date: 06/11/2022
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According to Carl C. Fenn, “Humanity is corruptible.”
Always was, always will be.
Another thought-provoking article: “The Dangers of Intellectual Arrogance”, by Carl C. Fenn, published in the American Thinker –
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Definition for Intellectual Arrogance, according to Conservapedia: a set of characteristics that tends to blind an otherwise intelligent person from recognizing the truth. These include:
1. A lack of logical rigor, resorting instead to preconceived notions or what one thinks he learned in school
2. A double standard to avoid admitting personal error, particularly an intellectual mistake
3. A lack of humility like Issac Newton’s declaration that he understood very little
4. Assuming one is always correct without having sufficiently studied an opposing position
5. Refusing to address another’s position, arrogantly assuming their argument is “beneath them”; a failure to even listen to opposing views
6. Thinking you’re an expert in every field
7. Asserting a dubious argument is obviously true or follows from logic, rather than proving or providing evidence from it
Intellectual arrogance leads to mistaken conclusions, which is the ever-unfolding story of psychiatry —
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Richard asks, “Without referring to human genetics, please explain to me what is inherently wrong with the theoretical model of a socialist society?”
How about the fact that a theoretical model isn’t reality, and that repeated attempts have repeatedly failed? I think that explains a lot.
Birdsong
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They may be both. I may adapt to my poverty by killing a rich dude.
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Richard I agree here. Even a person who has become so “Capitalist” that they lack the ability to empathize with those whose lives have been pilled and ruined economically by what fills theirs coffers, but yet they have had to adapt to a society that perpetuates the ideology that trauma, fear, coercion, the ability to intimidate and control through threats called deterrence is what you have to adapt to and obey to survive. I’m NOT saying that is always how it works, nor that Communism might not give such freedom beyond such, I’m just trying to make a point not to say that there’s only way way that would work.
From your statement here: “I don’t think you would be calling the socially unacceptable (and quite often self-defeating) behaviors that get labeled as “mental illness,” – “evil.”
Are they not “adaptive” behaviors to a very stressful and often traumatic world?”
You of course are referring to the fact that people who behave in a way that doesn’t give them points for fitting into the society that deems their behavior inappropriate, and in not adapting to that they are adapting to what lies beyond, because they can’t adapt to the confines of such a society and instead end up adapting to giving their wounds some space, some legroom, rather than being “functional.”
I’m perhaps taking it one step further that people who can’t express at all their trauma, they adapt to the society that rewards them for going along with the rewards of authoritarianism (even though they have lost their humanity to such a degree they don’t know what they are compromising themselves to, and in contrast to those whose behavior is labeled “inappropriate” rather than authoritarian, they have further cut themselves out of of being able to truly express their trauma. Which goes to show further the importance to allow that, to allow things deemed inappropriate etc. or self defeating, when this gives space or legroom to trauma that needs to be expressed, and that space might open up those gravitating towards authoritarianism to also be able to express their trauma rather than “adapting” to what their fear tells them “survival” is…… that might change things more that anything else.
When they have lost their soul and are trying to adapt out of fear.
But you say that: “Capitalism by its very nature AND design is built upon a hierarchical structure of unequal classes and inherent exploitation of one class over another.” One could argue that Communism does the same in ways, only rewarding those who go along with the program of what conceived of as being of good to the state. Capitalism might reward someone that does something completely against the beliefs of a society, would he be able to prove that it has value and convince others. It doesn’t have to first be approved of. And I’m NOT saying that Communism is built upon a hierarchical structure of unequal classes in contrast to Capitalism.
And you state that: “The working classes are NEVER paid the full value of the labor they create. They often live in the barest of subsistence levels of survival, and ultimately are made to fight (and die for) wars of political and economic domination over other nations and peoples.”
It seems to me that Europe, although much more socialist than the US, there are a handful of countries the working classes are better taken care of than other places regarding finances. But Europe still remains mostly Capitalistic, albeit it’s their socialist tendencies that take care that the workers in certain countries are better taken care of.
So you can’t really generalize in such a fashion, although socialism one could clearly argue is the mitigating factor that makes for the change that the workers there are better taken care of.
Socialism or Communism, where one to take the good from either or both might in the end boil down to the same thing, honoring potential.
I don’t know what to call that, but it certainly would involve a person expressing their experience of life, their viewpoint, their thoughts, how they see things, their own innate insight, passions and instincts…..
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Many “things” trigger evil behavior that have nothing to do with adaptation.
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What do socialism and communism have in common with mainstream psychiatry?
PATERNALISM —
“Is Paternalism the New Socialism?”, medium.com –
“Socialism: Good or Bad?” sites.psu.edu –
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Definitions for Paternalism:
– the system, principle, or practice of managing or governing individuals, businesses, nations, etc., in an outwardly benevolent, but often condescending and controlling way
– the policy or practice on the part of people in positions of authority of restricting the freedom and responsibilities of those subordinate to them in the subordinates’ supposed best interest
Check this out: “Paternalism (Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy) plato.stanford.edu./entries/paternalism
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I think authoritarianism is the real enemy, the belief that those higher in the hierarchy have the right to order about those below them at will. It can happen in communism, capitalism, or any other system of economic power distribution.
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Check out “Power, Paternalism, and Psychiatry, Authoritarian versus libertarian psychiatry.
It’s at psychologytoday.com
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Check out “Power, Paternalism, and Psychiatry: Authoritarian versus libertarian psychiatry.” by Mark L. Ruffalo, M.S.W., D.Psa. at psychologytoday.com
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me too!
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Steve says, “I think authoritarianism is the real enemy…”
Steve is right. Authoritarianism is the real enemy. But I think authoritarianism happens a lot more in communism and socialism than in capitalism. But that’s not to say capitalism doesn’t have some serious problems. But no matter what system decides the allocation of resources, power and greed will always be there, even in socialism, which to me is not only authoritarian, but extremely sanctimonious.
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And while egalitarianism is good in theory, putting it into practice is something else, especially in today’s complex world.
And anyone who thinks they can change human nature has a hell of a lot to learn —
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Read “Egalitarianism” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, at plato.stanford.edu
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Advertising from Capitalism is destroying are mental health. It’s called “brain washing” I think, but what that has to do with water and perhaps tubs might only be what I explained prior in a post. When water was scarce everyone used the same tub of water, the baby was last, and by then the water could be so muddy it was conjectured the baby might be thrown out with it. This is how “clean” the “brain washing” is regarding…
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Should have read” “Advertising from Capitalism is destroying out mental health.”
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A snide remark can trigger mass murder.
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Brenda,
Your comments are a bit mean. I’m a bit mean myself, so take it from me, there’s an upper limit to making your point. Beyond that you’re just insulting others. We are all people. Even when we disagree, we’re still people. You’re welcome here. None of the criticism is against you personally. People have different experiences, viewpoints, and voices and we share those here. This cite is unique because you can share whatever your view, even if it’s pro-status quo.
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I thought about this very point last night. The Posting Guidelines forbid attacking a person or making attacking generalizations about a group. But there is nothing saying we can’t attack IDEAS. Perhaps some folks find that confusing. You are all welcome to visit and share your ideas, but your ideas are going to be vulnerable to attack and may need to be defended with logic and data. There is nothing mean about letting someone know you disagree with them, especially if you provide legitimate data, either research data or personal experiences or both. It’s part of the price of coming here. If a person wants to challenge the ideas of others, they should expect that they may be challenged in the same manner. That’s how this community works.
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“If a person wants to challenge the ideas of others, they should expect that they may be challenged in the same manner. That’s how this community works.”
Funny but that’s all I have ever wanted, ….. that is for someone to challenge my allegations regarding these documents I have. And it has just never happened. I assume that people simply make the assumption that anyone making such allegations must be fuking mad, or a dead man walking……. which is true in a sense.
I mean, consider the absolute ‘panic’ about the release of 500 citizens medical records from the ‘hack’ into Medicare? This file called “Psycho” releasing the medical records of peoples psychiatric treatments. These records considered “particularly sensitive” and “potentially damaging” to these people….. and believe me, I can testify to the amount of damage which can be done with such information. especially when it has been “edited” to assassinate character, and to quote the “editor” ‘fuking destroy’ someone with a valid complaint.
But……… what happened when my medical records were unlawfully released from a Private Clinic? What about the hospital arbitrarily detaining and torturing me based on that unlawful release?
Okay, so I get legal representation, and they at least have a right to examine unredacted documents, to ensure that my human rights haven’t been violated. And the hospital doesn’t want them to obtain the documents in an unredacted form.
Now the lawyers had asked for documents relating to my detention on a specific date…… 30 Sept 2011. What did they receive? Well, the information about me being falsely called an “Outpatient” (two criminal offences there) and the information about me being ‘spiked’ with date rape drugs and being subjected to a request for an “acute stress reaction” from police before being interrogated by the Community Nurse and ‘verballed’ was removed.
Now what is it that they call “editing”? Keep in mind they are the people who claim these are sensitive documents and should be treated with ‘care’ (unlike their ‘clients’) Well, in my instance they went back through my file, and selected out some documents relating to some events which I found very traumatic in 1988……. which was 23 years before any documents requested by the Law Centre. And these documents contained my pain about being falsely accused of raping and murdering a young woman by Police. The man who committed these crimes caught some years later, though none of that information was provided by the hospital….. just a sort of slanderous ‘gossip’ presumably to turn my legal representatives against me…… and given their conduct, I can only assume this vicious character assassination worked.
What do I mean “their conduct”? Well, not only did they not pursue the ‘unredacted’ documents which they had a right to examine on my behalf, but they actually assisted the hospital in attempting to retrieve the documents I had obtained, and which showed the offending between the Private Clinic psychologist, and the people who arranged to have me arbitrarily detained and tortured. Police obiviously seeing the advantage in having a ‘confidential informant’ who would arrange arbitrary detentions and torture from a Private Clinic which does legal medico reports for the Courts and defense attorneys. Sensitive records? Handed out as a result of a telephone call from a hospital to the Private Clinic psychologist? After they had violated the human rights of a citizen by arbitrarily detaining and torturing them to bring them into ‘custody’?
I can see how such an ‘arrangement’ between the State and the Private Clinic my be mutually beneficial, though particularly damaging to their ‘paying clients’? And the Law Centre? Ensuring that the legal narrative fits the preferred narrative of the State, and then drafting a complaint and then forging the response from t he Chief Psychiatrist to throw their ‘clients’ under a bus? Nice, no wonder this Nation has such a good human rights record, they are telling the story they want told, not the truth.
And you can see how this sort of “editing” poison works right? I share my pain publicly, and I hope to share the autopsy photos with y’all too…. that was the intent of the Operations Manager when she deliberately ‘fuking destroyed’ me and my family with her unlawful conduct (tehe, isn’t Boans going to be surprised when that little tidbit of information starts getting passed around, on top of us using his wife to gaslight him…… Much admiration for how vicious it actually was)…. with the support of the Police because of the ‘valuable resource’ they had managed to obtain in the Private Clinic….. where Federal offences were occurring by the State receiving confidential medical records they had no right to. Cover up, and ensure that the Commission and the Feds simply don’t get told about the ‘resource’ they have managed to obtain…. until of course I turn up with the documents…. and the “Carnival is Over” as the Seekers once sung.
I wonder if they will be going back over my records and “editing” the 11 years of homelessness I have suffered as a result of these criminals. I know they have no intention of providing me with any ‘assistance’ other than a ‘hotshot’ in the E.D…… oh wait, that was just a means of getting the ‘hooks’ deep into the mouth of the Private Clinic psychologist. Naughty, naughty, you owe us one.
What about the 11 years I haven’t seen my family because …….. well, because if we got together and talked, it would be an embarrassment for the State, my wife doing exactly what she was told by the criminal public officers who threatened her to keep her mouth shut about the ‘spiking’ and the release of my medical records from the Clinic. So no divorce lawyer now that they know I have the factual legal narrative, no access to any legal representation at all because the people with a responsibility to act, did nothing of the sort. Instead recognising the benefits to be gained from the crimes of the Private Clinic psychologist ………And she did of course play a part in the attempt to ….. well, that really was kind of ugly….. so she knows how easily the State can ‘let one slip through to the keeper’… and she might find herself being ‘assisted’ in the Emergency Dept.
So no Steve, it’s not how this community works. There is an element of ‘looking the other way’ when the powers that be prefer the “edited” version of reality. When speaking the truth is better left unchallenged because examining the facts results in the “edited” legal narrative crumbling……… and it’s just easier to ‘sacrifice’ the victim, that hold the perpetrators to account.
And that’s okay too. I have learned a lot about what it would have been like to have been on the receiving end of the ‘treatments’ of the National Socialist’s. But it really makes me want to vomit when I hear people talk about how they wouldn’t stand by while their ‘brother’ was tortured and killed for nothing more than speaking the truth. The State weighing up what my life is worth against the information they can obtain unlawfully from their new ‘resource’. And sure, I get it, i’m worth about the cost of $5 worth of morphine in an E.D. and a few photocopied and “edited” documents for the Coroner. The Judas’ who I have met who make agreements, knowing they have no intention of standing by those agreements, and will sell out their own for 15 pieces of silver.
So, no, it’s not how this community works ……..always.
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Removed for moderation.
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Brenda Schaeffer, you leave no clear reference as to what you feel is a snide remark. I was simply depicting what brainwashing can do, and how that can be related to the advertising that goes on with Capitalism for profit. With the washing, stuff gets so covered up that one doesn’t know what one is throwing out.
No, I don’t think that it is a snide remark when one is attempting to expose the push towards psychiatric treatment that forces drugs on people, when the drugs can be clearly pointed out with statistics to be interpreted to be in collusion with the spike in mass shootings and the spike in the occurrence of what is labeled as mental illnesses. That in contrast to the advertisements that they are needed to stop it. That was my simple depiction of brainwashing.
Mind Freedom, an organization that also promotes non violent activism, they had a hunger strike asking the drug companies in 2003 for proof of their chemical imbalance theory, they couldn’t do that: https://mindfreedom.org/kb/2003/ and because of the confidentiality implied with medical records, the information regarding psychiatric drugs and mass shootings remains hidden, often. Despite that, anti-depressants have a warning label that they can cause homicidal and suicidal thoughts. I happen to out of nowhere have had a conversation with a man on a bus who stated that he had a foster care facility close to where the Columbine shootings happened, and both the boys from that shooting would come to his foster care facility, play pool, and told how they had been bullied in school, how they went to the principle who sent them to the sheriff, who sent them to the principle, and nothing was done. The ring leader of the two boys also told how his medications had been changed to Luvox, and how he had been having hateful thoughts towards everyone (his teachers, friends, family, girlfriend etc.) and the doctor had told him to just keep taking the medications. That was a few weeks before the shootings. And the truth regarding such collusion was bought out by the drug companies, when a legal case was brought out. When people here on this site, expose such truths, they are preventing mass shootings, not making snide remarks causing them. There is in fact a whole congregation of people on this site that would know better than to tell that boy to just keep on taking medications that were having such a response from him, and THAT could have PREVENTED the shootings.
As Mind Freedom is a site promoting non violent resistance, I’ve been a protester against wars. I’ve also been in several situations where I could have been in extreme danger, but I knew how to de-escalate the situation, and still see the humanity in the other person. The very concept of understanding where another person is coming from, and certainly if they have legitimate trauma that needs to be acknowledged, rather than the symptoms of the expression of it turned off with psychiatric drugs (see the example I gave of the conversation on a bus), this has to go beyond: “this is the solution because that’s what we’re told.”
It’s easy to throw out a catch phrase that is supposed to resonate with a whole matrix of assumptions (those not promoting psychiatric drugs are causing mass shootings) and see their attempt to describe how such brainwashing in advertising as a snide remark, but that in itself may be a sign of not allowing thought, and trying to cover up anything deviating from such assumptions. Because one is trying to categorize a whole matrix of medley of responses without looking at the context. Muddying the waters.
There is then a Brenda Schaeffer who maintains that falling in love with the wrong person and not being able to let go is like a chemical imbalance, and you will have withdrawal symptoms etc. Science shows that psychiatric drugs also cause chemical imbalance rather than treating it, and then there’s the rest addiction, withdrawal, side effects etc. And there are many on this site that would not promote taking psychiatric drugs to treat a chemical imbalance because the resonant scientific data says it does the opposite, it causes one. Same as the example of the Columbine shootings, there’s quite a bit of evidence that it made things worse…..
To label an attempt to expose that as snide behavior, this could mean that one would need to take account themselves what they have invested in as needing respect, being an authority, and….
In regard to what causes mass shootings…….
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Brenda Schaeffer, you leave no clear reference as to what you feel is a snide remark. I was simply depicting what brainwashing can do, and how that can be related to the advertising that goes on with Capitalism for profit. With the washing, stuff gets so covered up that one doesn’t know what one is throwing out.
No, I don’t think that it is a snide remark when one is attempting to expose the push towards psychiatric treatment that forces drugs on people, when the drugs can be clearly pointed out with statistics to be interpreted to be in collusion with the spike in mass shootings and the spike in the occurrence of what is labeled as mental illnesses. That in contrast to the advertisements that they are needed to stop it. That was my simple depiction of brainwashing.
Mind Freedom, an organization that also promotes non violent activism, they had a hunger strike asking the drug companies in 2003 for proof of their chemical imbalance theory, they couldn’t do that: https://mindfreedom.org/kb/2003/ and because of the confidentiality implied with medical records, the information regarding psychiatric drugs and mass shootings remains hidden, often. Despite that, anti-depressants have a warning label that they can cause homicidal and suicidal thoughts. I happen to out of nowhere have had a conversation with a man on a bus who stated that he had a foster care facility close to where the Columbine shootings happened, and both the boys from that shooting would come to his foster care facility, play pool, and told how they had been bullied in school, how they went to the principle who sent them to the sheriff, who sent them to the principle, and nothing was done. The ring leader of the two boys also told how his medications had been changed to Luvox, and how he had been having hateful thoughts towards everyone (his teachers, friends, family, girlfriend etc.) and the doctor had told him to just keep taking the medications. That was a few weeks before the shootings. And the truth regarding such collusion was bought out by the drug companies, when a legal case was brought out. When people here on this site, expose such truths, they are preventing mass shootings, not making snide remarks causing them. There is in fact a whole congregation of people on this site that would know better than to tell that boy to just keep on taking medications that were having such a response from him, and THAT could have PREVENTED the shootings.
As Mind Freedom is a site promoting non violent resistance, I’ve been a protester against wars. I’ve also been in several situations where I could have been in extreme danger, but I knew how to de-escalate the situation, and still see the humanity in the other person. The very concept of understanding where another person is coming from, and certainly if they have legitimate trauma that needs to be acknowledged, rather than the symptoms of the expression of it turned off with psychiatric drugs (see the example I gave of the conversation on a bus), this has to go beyond: “this is the solution because that’s what we’re told.”
It’s easy to throw out a catch phrase that is supposed to resonate with a whole matrix of assumptions (those not promoting psychiatric drugs are causing mass shootings) and see their attempt to describe how such brainwashing in advertising muddies the waters as a snide remark. But that [such categorizing] in itself may be a sign of not allowing thought, and trying to cover up anything deviating from such assumptions. Because one is trying to categorize a whole matrix of medley of responses without looking at the context. Muddying the waters.
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I hadn’t but skimmed over this article, but I also find it a bit “funny” after calmly reading through it. If one would take it seriously, then one would think that those who are privileged by their lack of empathy, by their hard liner ideals that they deserve what they prevent others from getting, that pretentious materialistic debauchery (being spoiled rotten with superficial things) and the ability to deceive others is a sign of sanity; and those abused by all of that are the ones with “mental illnesses.”
WHO is ADVERTISING what as some “mental health” problem listed as a “disease” based on said “symptoms!?” I really think it’s the one’s made out to be “sane.”
“Other studies show that capitalists and managers report better psychological well-being than workers and supervisors.”
Also, having tried TWICE to get it right, first I wrote in my first post here: “Advertising from capitalism is destroying are mental health,” tried to correct that as: “Advertising from Capitalism is destroying out mental health,” and it should be
ADVERTISING FROM CAPITALISM IS DESTROYING OUR MENTAL HEALTH
We’ve become consumers that are so addicted, we think that pills can create “mental health,” and when that creates instead an epidemic, we believe that needs to be forced on people. And those leading all of that onslaught are then heralded as “sane.” We’re brainwashed.
Who exactly is forcing people to buy stuff at McDonald’s, Wallmarts, to load up on the latest fashions brought on by peer pressure and the fear of being different, to let an idea of convenience destroy their ability to think for themselves as long as it involves pressing a button or having it prepackaged in more plastic that what you end up with, that parking your rear end in a church regularly to be filled with what you are told is how things work in “Heaven” prevents you from some “benevolent God” that would throw you into a lake of fire, I don’t know what else and I’m going to take a step back rather than highlighting the discrepancy and being labeled indecent, crazy and unrealistic because it seems that those with all of the money can do things that they aren’t supposed to, whether its by covering it up or conning people to believe it’s some dream that only money can buy, all hyped up by the moralism of the masses as to what’s possible, decent and reasonable or not!?
Maybe if people had a different idea of what making it is, and what happiness is, maybe if they dared to believe something that they think is impossible and get social points for denying, maybe if they wouldn’t look for a convenient excuse to deny it when someone is truly hurt, and needs a little love, a helping hand or just someone to listen to their story, as if there’s a loss to venture into being human!?
Sorry, but to read this whole analyses that heralds what mental health isn’t in order to capitalize on defining it as something it can’t be……
“Other studies show that capitalists and managers report better psychological well-being than workers and supervisors.”
“better psychological well-being”
(!?)
It might not just be capitalism, it might be the academia of defining “psychological well-being” so wonderfully mental that it doesn’t matter that it goes round in circles (capitalism has ruined mental health, because the capitalists have the best mental health), and thus passes and sells as being informative…
Sort of like who is best at believing a lie (the unproven biological theology regarding mental illness), they can determine who is mentally ill and who isn’t. And cause all of the chemical imbalance that’s prevalent with their treatment (what psychiatric drugs scientifically and statistically have proven to cause). And who is paranoid, non reality based and scared of being human?
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José G. Luiggi-Hernández,
This article is an improvement: a stark contrast from your prior article of pro-misogyny pontificating. I am hopeful you heeded our feedback
These theories deserve the platforming: we all live in capitalism so the data is real, measurable, repeatable, and is based on reality (unlike the assumptions of dsm labels). The mainstream embraced this too, even the best-sellers lists. Johann Hari, a sociologist and author, often details similar links between suffering and disconnections in modern neoliberal/ individualistic capital-driven society.
More researchers should pursue a stronger union between psychology and sociology that focuses on real problems and real solutions. If psychology stopped the carceral, punitive, enabling of drug profiteering and just fully embraced human reality- my god- A mental health system that helped someone’s mental health?! would be wonderful
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anotherone, you mention an article of “pro-misogyny pontificating” by José G. Luiggi -Hernández. Which article you mean? Is it still available on the MIA website?
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Hello Joanna,
yes it is. The title is seemingly innocuous but the main message is familiarly problematic: that anyone diagnosed with BPD needs to be taught empathy by a therapist. Most BPD articles are coded in misogyny, but this dog-whistle was particularly loud.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/10/psychodynamic-therapy-beats-dbt-improved-reflective-functioning/
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Thank you, anotherone, I understand what you mean. I have also noticed the illustration which you (and KateL) had criticized in your comments. To be fair to Mr Luiggi -Hernández, he was only reporting on a study, not expressing his own views on people diagnosed with BPD.
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Joanna,
you’re welcome. And yes, I do notice which posts are by an author and which are an author’s repost of another author. And yes, to be fair it can be tricky to understand endorsement. I am somewhat confused about why this reposting and summarizing is done.
I can see how my insistence can be seen as rude, I believe strongly in epistemic justice. There are too many mental health conversations that exclude us. Too few where we can safely express dissent without retaliation. I understand that my views are my own, I do not care to prosleytize. I like this site for the freedom of discussion but I feel a personal imperative to speak against concept creep from the more egregiously violating aspects of the MH industry. i believe that particular reposted article was both an endorsement of harm and concept creep so I spoke accordingly.
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Anotherone, thanks a lot for explaining your approach. Like you, I am wondering if such long reports on academic articles are actually a good idea. Maybe it would be much better to post a short summary of an academic article and a link to its PDF version in case it is available.
Just like you, I believe in epistemic justice and I fully agree with you that conversations on “mental health” tend to exclude people like us. As you said, there are very few websites like this one, websites where people who are critical of psychiatry and psychology are not being mocked and silenced.
I, too, feel that unfortunately some of the authors on the MIA website are not critical enough towards the mental health industry and towards academic articles. As it seems, one usually needs to directly experience the harms, injustices and absurdity of the mental health system and other systems which supposedly protect vulnerable people in order to have a sufficient level of mistrust towards the mainstream perspective on “mental health”…
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And those who have found relief and wholeness and life-saving intervention through a different model of psychiatry must not express their opinions here. Is that correct?
Just as wounded and sensitive and criticized by insensitive fools must not offer differring points of view. And those who have found relief and wholeness and life-saving intervention through a different model of psychiatry must not express their opinions here. Is that correct?
Just as wounded and sensitive and criticized by insensitive fools must not offer differing points of view. That smacks of a fear driven, closed-minded, authoritative dictatorship, to me. No?
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POSTING AS MODERATOR: Brenda, I want to clarify that EVERY viewpoint is welcome here, and we NEVER moderate anything based on the content. Clearly, anyone claiming that the medical model is “correct” is going to have to deal with a range of varying opinions, some expressed with more passion than others. But that is hardly different than what you have offered above. So everyone is always welcome to offer differing points of view, but everyone else is also entitled to respond with theirs, and there is no rule against disagreeing or challenging folks to come up with data to support their viewpoints. As long as those disagreeing with you are civil in their replies, they have the same rights as you do to express whatever opinions or viewpoints they have.
I hope that makes things clearer.
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Joanna,
Thank you for YOUR explanation! It’s so refreshing to read your profound kindness, pragmatism, and wisdom spoken with such diplomacy.
Brenda,
is this directed at me? Because your comment is a reply to mine. Not sure I understand what you’re telling me or how it makes sense within context
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Replying to Brenda Schaefer: If you haven’t found material on this site that answers all your “questions” with no, you haven’t looked enough at the material here. And no, although you insinuate they [your questions] are rhetorical, there are clear answers pointing out that this site doesn’t oppress differing views as you maintain. If you are going to ask a question, then let it be a real one, out of curiosity.
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I agree 100%.
It’s so obvious that it doesn’t even need to be said, and anyone who suggests that capitalism is an advancement from feudalism needs to understand that there are no differences between the two.
Human suffering is essential for capitalism to thrive.
As someone who has outgrown autism living neck deep in the deep South, Georgia, I have a front row seat of what capitalism does to people. Capitalism is a biased system whose modus operandi is always getting the dough via oppression of the “other.”
To provide an example, the bogus gay marriage movement versus Chick-fil-A. I’m an advocate of free love; free speech be damned because it’s a capitalist aphrodisiac. Nobody won this battle because both the gays were being co-opted albeit unbeknownst to them by neoliberal corporations against neoconservative organizations. The winner was clearly capitalism because it gets off on the hottest trends to put it simply. Falling in love with someone of the same gender or sex was considered trendy or dare I say edgy in America, and so this fake debate was spawned over “values” as if it were a game.
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TY0987,
I also compare it to feudalism!
Absolutely concur with this point:
” anyone who suggests that capitalism is an advancement from feudalism needs to understand that there are no differences between the two.”
Hello fellow southeasterner! Brutality and assigned scapegoat roles- cronyism is law in my state too. Could not agree more with this:
“I have a front row seat of what capitalism does to people. Capitalism is a biased system whose modus operandi is always getting the dough via oppression of the “other.”
With regards to the anti Chik-Fil-A movement, you are correct in that it did snowball into reductivist brawling. But its origins were valid and warranted. It wasn’t about gay marriage. It was about conversion therapy, which is legal in the segments of the troubled teen industry that misuse religious protections.
The former CEO had a charity that funded much of the conversion therapy in the US. those protests were successful since Chik-Fil- A stopped funding conversion therapy.
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This whole article is still making me a bit hysterical.
I really think it’s the “capitalists” or rather than branch of them that could as easily be called “socialists” when it involves how they gang together into guilds (Whitaker has co-written a book on this), and thus share the wealth amongst each other; it’s them that have coined with the DSM these diagnosis that are steered towards profits for the drug Industries, along with a suppression of dissent, and fear of not fitting in with fear based indoctrination at social, institutional and religious levels.
WHY then does this article use the definitions coined by the capitalists in order to prove that capitalism causes such? Capitalism WANTS you to see it as a disease. WHAT if you simply felt it when you were “depressed” or “anxious” or any of the others!? WHAT if you felt it rather than pushing it away as a disease!? Pushing it away might be the major cause of the discomfort!? Would you not see it as something to push away, would you just feel it, you might find something money can’t buy you. I don’t think that’s caused by capitalism, and I don’t think it’s a disease….
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TY and Nijinsky,
I’m really enjoying each of your points of view.
My prior support withstanding, this article seems obfuscating. The premise is valid, but any nuanced debate on this can obscure the actual issues. I just want to be safe, have a good life, be free. I don’t need to get into the weeds about the new terms for the same bs.
I’ll wave my identifier flags anyways: I’m on the left and LGBT. I can still overlook myself to identify the social dysfunction profiteers. The MH system makes money from societal suffering. I’d prefer solutions and less complicated explanations.
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anotherone says, “….this article seems obfuscating. The premise is valid, but any nuanced debate on this can obscure the actual issues.”
I totally agree. The authors can’t see the forest for the trees.
anotherone then says, “I just want to be safe, have a good life, be free.”
That’s all I’ve ever wanted, but psychiatry did a good job interfering with that.
anotherone then says, “I don’t need to get into the weeds about the new terms for the same bs…. I can still overlook myself to identify the social dysfunction profiteers. The MH system makes money from societal suffering. I’d prefer solutions and less complicated explanations.”
I couldn’t agree more. And here’s my ‘identifier flags’: I’m moderately conservative and totally straight. But I keep having to ask myself one baffling question:
Why are so many MH “experts” so jealously (and unconsciously) myopic?
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Birdsong,
Always a big compliment when you agree with me. Glad you showed up to this big, sprawling debate.
To the unconsciously myopic: I think rigid thinking and unencumbered ego are mandatory to snag the requisite degrees. There was an author shared here who writes about bulverism in medicine too. He’s written books on the field’s cruelty. Suffice to say, the pathology of psychiatry has been peer-reviewed.
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anotherone says, “To the unconsciously myopic: I think rigid thinking and unencumbered ego are mandatory to snag the requisite degrees…”
Thank you! It’s what I’d sensed for a long time. And I didn’t know there was a word for it: bulverism. And get this: I once saw a psychiatrist who said psychiatrists are trained to not believe what their patients tell them. I was shocked to hear this, but again, it’s what I’d sensed. To use his words, “What you think happened didn’t really happen, it was just your perception of what happened,” which horrifies me to this day. But I later learned Freud had a lot to do with this unholy way of thinking, which makes him the greatest gaslighter of all time.
And regarding bulverism: I don’t think it matters what kind of psy degree someone has, as they’re all doing the same thing, imo. So what does that make them? A bunch of “bulverisors”, straight from the school of bulverism.
And thank you for your words of welcome. They’re much appreciated.
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anotherone says, “….the pathology of psychiatry has been peer-reviewed.”
Psychiatry IS pathology!!!
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Nijinsky says, “Capitalism WANTS you to see it as a disease.”
Yes. And we have psychiatry to thank for that, something that Steve explains at length in an earlier post in these comments.
It’s a kind of sick synergy, what happened among psychiatrists, the drug and insurance companies, like a dirty “one hand washes the other” type of thing: what is good for psychiatrists is good for capitalism, and what was good for capitalism (drug companies) is good for psychiatrists.
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There’s good and bad in capitalism. And psychiatry is its worst manifestation.
There’s good and bad in communism. And psychiatry is its worst manifestation.
There’s good and bad in socialism. And psychiatry is its worst manifestation.
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Thanks Birdsong! I looked up the author again. His name is Carl Elliott. This is from his article called ‘Response- Corruption of Character in Medicine’,
“While my reasons for leaving medicine were complicated—the anti-intellectual attitudes, the authoritarianism, the thinly veiled hazing rituals—the most important one was this: I had come to believe that medical training was turning me into a terrible human being.”
I got the term, bulverism from his writing. Apt description for the current paradigm.
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Thank you anotherone! I’m very grateful for your excellent recommendation –
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Sorry to pile-on reading recommendations, but Wendy Browns, “Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution”, is essential reading surrounding the psycho-social and political implications of (ehh…for lack of a better term) late stage capitalism. Chapters 2 and 3 riff Foucauldian themes (Birth of Biopolitics Lectures, etc.). It’s impossible to read Browns book carefully and not come away overwhelmed by the implications to our collective future, much less the implications upon everyone’s mental and spiritual health (from an evolutionary standpoint-down).
One small point on the connotative portent from the word capitalism. Capitalism in the USA is different than, say, capitalism in Denmark or Algeria, etc. In Denmark, as well as dozens of other countries, nobody losses their home or becomes homeless as a result of medical bills, or is forced into debt peonage to finance an education so as to “have a chance” to avert a lifetime of economic precarity. In the US, neither is the case. Examples expound, pro and con, none of which the political individual and collective unconscious don’t weigh mightily.
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Kevin, you have made an excellent point. Capitalism in the USA and in most of the world is very different from capitalism in some Western countries with free healthcare systems, well-developed welfare systems etc. Some capitalist countries do a lot to help vulnerable people.
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Australian government scrambling to ensure that the medical records of millions of Australians being released on the ‘dark web’ (whatever that is) does not fall into the hands of ‘capitalists’.
It’s kind of strange for me to watch as they make all these claims about the “scumbags” committing this “dog act”.
In my instance the resources allocated to provide material assistance to the “scumbags” came from the people who had a duty to investigate the breach, who refused to take the ‘evidence’ while the criminals sorted out their little problem with an ‘unintended negative outcome’.
If the reaction to these peoples medical records being released is anything to go by, I might have misunderstood the motive for the State and their ‘confidential informant’ (leaking information from a Private Clinic to the State unlawfully) who arranged to have me ‘spiked’ with date rape drugs, arbitrarily detained and tortured. The value of the ‘resource’ providing confidential medical records from inside the Clinic possible worth the loss of human life to protect. And the State then “editing” documents with the claim they need to protect their ‘informants’?
Two years of feeding information unlawfully from the Clinic to others, and then I turn up with the proof of the ‘leak’? “Who else has got the documents?” indeed. Wooops, sorry to spoil the unlawful fun of the State …… and I understand why you turned a blind eye to the attempt to ……. Yeah, it’s great that those who refuse to examine the facts/truth are prepared with their knee jerk justification of “they wouldn’t do that”.
Oh well, there’s going to be a lot of harm and damage to a lot of people as a result of this ‘hack’ of personal medical records. many folk not even aware that doctors have been using psychiatric billing codes to claim insurance without informing their ‘patients’ (for their own protection of course)?
I am reminded of the comments of Lt Lockhart in Full Metal Jacket after the Tet Offensive. “It’s one giant shit sandwich, and we’re all going to have to take a bite”.
All of a sudden I don’t feel so alone. My ‘warning’ silenced by corrupt public officers, now truns into a tsunami of victims? Whilst it was the State (Public Officers) who deliberately slandered and fuking destroyed my life, I don’t suppose it really matters who actually does it. And the hypocrisy of those now claiming it was a “dog act” who turned a blind eye when it was my medical records being used as a weapon?
I assume the data will not be published by the media, and will no doubt be like the information gathered for Covid tracing (and then unlawfully accessed by police with a ‘sorry’ after the breach?). This will make it all the more valuable to those who do have exclusive access?
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Hello,
This is an interesting topic, and I can understand the concern about how modern society is affecting our mental health. However, those holding the theory that capitalism is the cause need to prove it by isolation the variable. If there were countries with the same conditions but using an alternative system and identifying that they lack these problems, then there would be some support for such a theory. I have endured a Marxist system for thirty years, and I can do that. I can explain how Marxism arms bureaucrats with the perfect platform to impose a state-level of narcissism abuse on their citizens. Then people say, ops the experiment did not work because, in those cases, the leaders were corrupt, instead of understanding that corruption is the result of applying Marxist.
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Here’s a hint: there are cultures where “postpartum depression” essentially does not occur. These cultures are characterized by providing instant and ongoing support to new mothers, surrounding them with folks to cook, clean, sew, heat the home, etc. so the mother has only to care for the child. In our “enlightened” culture, we give moms next to zero support and six weeks of “parental leave,” often unpaid, and threaten the mother and family with poverty if she decides not to come back to “work” soon enough.
I wonder why we have more “postpartum depression?” Must be genetic…
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Thank you for mentioning “postpartum depression”. It brings into focus what’s most wrong in this over-capitalized culture: little regard for mothers, infants and families. I think it’s inexcusable in a country as wealthy as ours. And I wonder what goes through the minds of people who make policy.
I think people need to carefully consider their values before deciding on any form of economic or political system. And of course the strain of unfavorable working conditions effects people and their families. That’s the saddest part.
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Abel, I appreciate your comment based on your experience. I also like some of Richard’s comments. And I like some of Barts comments. And I like some of Steve’s comments. And Vans comments. And I like Marie’s comments. And I like I like I like….it is a pity there is no “like” button. I may not fully know why I like people’s comments and I feel that this is okay. Not to know. I just pick up a general vibe or dimeanour.
But I will say it vexes me when in the heat of the moment people grow volatile in a personally agravating way that I find unnecessary. Dictatorial.
It puts me off visiting this website. I am sure many agree. That is a pity for the website since welcoming diverse views ought to be a main priority.
But we live in bickering times where people fight and fight and fight with little provocation.
As a dignified peace focussed New Ager I feel it is healthy to work out why the excess tendency to bicker is occurring right now. It reminds me of when a herd stampedes because a sheaf of grass fluttered in the breeze.
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bart,
As for comparing religions, you might like what I found when googling salvation from comparativereligion.com. It’s pretty long, so I started with going to the conclusion first.
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True religion is about caring for people, and capitalism is about making a profit.
And some of the worst people in the world are the most religious, and some of the kindest are capitalists –
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I cannot believe the brawling going on here. Implying that grown people are idiotic for cherishing the philosophies they freely choose to is bullying. Taunting, patronizing, belittling, schooling, arguing endlessly over minor differences, what is going on here? This place is not an inquiring venue where different views can be mulled over like various vintage wines, it has become a wrestling match or a street fight with opposing gangs. Comment rage is like road rage, we can all spectate the blood and tufts of hair rolling in the breeze, the shattered glass, the dented steel, and we can all get pedestrian satisfaction from witnessing the brawling of such captive tigers, OR
We can realize we are responsible for recognizing that a wish to be a bully or bully a bully back into submission is from a herd impulse to get rid of our own mounting stress.
I am more interested in the stress that lurks behind the bickering attempt to vent such rage.
Where are all the therapists? Are they reading this shameful comment warzone with ticket holder’s glee? Do they have ringside seats pulled close to the action? It is not peaceable bonding or “solutions” that spectators and wrestlers want, it is sharply drawn battle lines. Why?
Because we are ALL ILL..
ILL ILL ILL
ILL ILL ILL ILL
but rather than weep we pick up cudgels and cosh apparent enemies. Just because they got a phrase wrong.
The Hoover Dam is going to be exploded. I prophecy it. But a gazillion incendiary computer conversations will lead up to it, it and all the other disasters.
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Why is it that some of the worst people are the most religious and some of the kindest people are capitalists? Or socialists? Or communists?
But psychiatry stinks anywhere you find it, hands down.
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