ultraviolet-techno-ecology:

ultraviolet-techno-ecology:

Suicide rates are absolutely going to continue to climb in the USA as long as our concept of “Mental Health” remains separated from material conditions.

Antidepressants can’t cure poverty and alienation. They can’t cure the crushing pressure that comes with watching climate changing in real time, but feeling powerless because the government is too corrupt to care. They can’t cure the many chronic physical health conditions people go without treatment for because the US physical health system is bullshit.

Always turning toward psychiatry for an answer is a perfect example of American style individualism killing people, because the problem is always said to exist in the individual’s brain chemicals, and society is always innocent.

As the famous quote goes
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.“

This post has gained a lot of traction outside of tumblr due to being reposted by several facebook groups. A large number of people subsequently read this as a criticism of all therapy or medicine within the mental health field.

I want to just state very clearly – that my criticism here is very explicitly about using psychiatry as a bandage for physical health, socio-economic stress, environmental alienation, and other fundamentally non-psychiatric problems.

I’m not saying “Joe who suffers from chronic depression, actually just needs to get some fresh air.”

What I am saying is “Felix the pain management doctor who refuses to give medicine to patients with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, but will instead send them to psychiatry with the accusation that their pain is imaginary or caused by depression or trauma (Despite literally dislocating their bones on a daily basis) is a complete asshole.”

Or even… “Julia the trans woman who ended up on the street  after being disowned by family and friends, should not have her oppressors actions ignored in favour of a narrative in which her suffering is exclusively the result of abnormal brain chemicals or genetics. That we should recognize that suffering is a normal and healthy response to social isolation, and that holding bigotry accountable and building real support networks needs to fucking happen for society to grow.”