Politicians want to improve our worsening mental health with big psychiatric initiatives. The problem with this model, says historian of neuroscience Danielle Carr, is that it ignores the social and structural forces causing widespread mental suffering.
Biologist here. You are absolutely correct.
The “mental health” we talk about is 100% the functioning of your physical brain. Your physical brain is partly a function of your genes, inherited from your parents and grandparents stretching back to before the first two cells decided to cooperate. It’s partly epigenetics - if your mother was malnourished or stressed that will carry over onto you and can last until your kids’ generation. It’s partly the embryonic environment - nutrition, drug and alcohol use, physical and emotional stresses of the mother, overall medical health. It’s partly how you were raised - physical and emotional abuse, education opportunities, supportive environment, racism, violence, poverty, acceptance. It is constantly being tuned - if you’re in an honor culture in which physical defense of personal honor is mandatory, you’ll have received rewards for doing so. Those help pre-condition the brain to do that kind of thing again, more easily next time. PTSD, whether you’re a marine from Iraq or a kid from Gaza, will change your brain.
Mental health care including medication and therapy can help these problems, but systemic problems need to be addressed systemically, and we’d be better off if we were able to start to alleviate these issues at their causal level.
Here’s a quote from a relevant Financial Times article about Blackpool, a deprived English seaside town:
Politically controversial though, so good luck getting politicians to tackle some of the root causes, even if it would likely end up saving money and increase productivity.
Oh, I completely understand. That’s why I’d never oppose something like prison reform - although I think it’s a medical problem and the notion of prisons are problematic, I’d rather make life better now than hold off for making everything much much better.
Still, it happens. People used to think epilepsy was caused by demonic possession. We now know it’s just brains misfiring. Knowing that, we can treat the condition with medicine and therapy. We need to expand on that kind of understanding.
I misread your statement on prison reform and was really confused for a minute there!
You’re spot on about now vs later; anytime somebody advocates for waiting for improvements over time, it’s almost always a lie to distract from an unwanted compromise now.