This gets tricky though, some psychological problems are temporary. They can be fixed with proper treatment. However people suffering from them aren't in the best place to make a decision like wether or not they should end their own life. In this case you want to protect these people and get them better.
I think the problem is we've built a society though where it's so easy to end up sad and that needs fixed.
I agree with everything you've written, but from a personal mental health perspective, it makes sense for most of the population to accept it. That is, until it's certain to be fixed in their lifetime.
But should we be treating those kinds of things with a medication or should we be treating it with education? Should we be more forgiving to people and allowing them the space they need to process life events instead of worrying about money or their jobs or all this crap.
The difference is handing someone a bottle and saying "here this will go away quick!" Vs just generally having a better more emotionally aware society.
Some processes that are brains go through should be allowed and it should be accepted that they run their full natural course given that the human that has the brain is also being cared for and guided in some sort of way during this process and not just isolated and shunned away.
Ah sure, that's a broader claim and I think is less obviously true.
In general, I think a lot of existential crises are caused by having some psychological need not met, and so making sure psychological needs are met seems like a reasonable approach for preventing/addressing them.
Another part of this claim that's not super obvious to me is how/why _helping_ people specifically is important, as opposed other ways you can have people in your life.
There's lots of people in this world who are sad. Are you suggesting we should prioritize the aggressors over their victims, just because they happen to look like you? Or because they're at a higher risk of committing terrorism?
Also, that doesn't scale. Getting someone a therapist costs a good amount of money, getting them on meds is dirt cheap. Convincing someone who doesn't trust you very much they should go see a therapist is going to be a very hard sell.
The problem is that they are a bandage for the real problem. While some people may have a temperament that predisposes them to having depressive episodes or symptoms, or constitutional defects that may result in such problems, the general rise in depression, anxiety, and mental illness thus characterized points toward a cultural crisis.
For example, the sexual revolution and the hedonistic false promise of "safe sex" and "free love" has wrecked families and communities, poisoned relations between the sexes (as this worldview is fundamentally selfish and exploitative), devalued human life; produced friendlessness, porn-addicted incels, sexual abuse, demographic decline; and produced an inability to relate to other human beings in healthy ways. That this should produce loneliness and isolation is not surprising, and this alone could produce the observed misery as human beings are profoundly social animals who grow and thrive by giving and receiving care in the various relations they enter into.
Note also the ideologies of big-c Capitalism (not to be confused with free markets) and Socialism, both of which ultimately celebrate selfishness; self-centered people are not the exemplars of happiness, to say the least. Both ideologies are rooted in the false anthropology served up by liberalism (as in Locke, not as in liberal institutions), one that misconstrues freedom as being able to do whatever you want--a concern for only exterior constraint--versus being able to do what you ought, to live according to human nature, to acquire the virtues--in a word, self-mastery. The liberal view of freedom naturally leads to debauched and increasingly depraved indulgence of the base passions, ever greater rebellion against and distortion of reason, something the wisest of the ancients already recognized was a recipe for misery, not happiness. "[A] good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices." Thus wrote Augustine. Living immorally, living by vice, produces misery by definition. Evil actions destroy the evildoer from the inside.
And do not forget repressed and unresolved guilt, something sexual misbehavior easily and justifiably produces and multiplies. We have abolished the notion once called "sin" from our culture as some archaic superstition. If we're just atoms in the void, who cares? Ah, but it is not so. Guilt isn't just something you can erase. It lodges itself in the mind like a splinter, a poison, a worm. It calls for justice. It gnaws at us. Repressed, it exacts revenge through strangely expressed symptoms, like what we once called neurosis, which is to say anxiety, despair, and depression; behaviors like projection of the burden of guilt onto scapegoats. How often do these not become construed in medical terms, understood as maladies to be treated like a physical disease. By obfuscating the true cause, we've robbed ourselves of he explanation and the way to freedom. The truth will set your free, but this will not be easy. Taking stock of one's moral past terrifies the prideful man. It threatens his addictions. The light of truth sears his conscience, makes him see the arrows piecing his soul. How to remove them? There is a way. But even then, the wounds need time to heal.
The tendency to transform our moral deficits into medical problems is escapism, and it will not last. It will ruin us totally.
I guess in many cases the problem is that it is not obvious how to react to mental health issues. There are only theories on how to cure someone, but few certain measurements. Still, at least attempts at cures should be made (or at prevention).
Totally, but most people are not emotionally well adjusted or in a place where they an introspect and build themselves up to be the better version of themselves. A lot of folks would be helped by therapy and having someone to talk through to work through this (but that's a healthcare conversation, which we don't have to devolve into here).
I unequivocally do not condone folks who go off the rails in ways that cause harm to others (self destruction and harm is similar, but a different conversation), but I've seen enough mental health challenges and crises to understand why it happens. In general, life is hard, and no one is coming to save you except yourself.
This is an unreasonable response - not infrequently the causes are not things that can be fixed in the short term (eg years of neglect and abuse as a child), or are simple facts of life (eg an objective purpose in life does not exist). There's a whole slew of these kinds of origins and I'd venture to say that expecting to solve them for you personally in a timeframe that doesn't lead you to die from starvation (because you cannot work in the meantime) is really not practical.
That being said, it's something I think everyone should work on. Just not as a primary response mechanism to life-destroying issues happening right now.
I think you're right that there are social, societal, and stress-related causes of many of these conditions that are under-explored. And certainly the cultural attitudes need to be adjusted more towards compassionate acceptance and helping others than they are today.
However, when it comes to an individual person being stuck in one of those states... What you are saying winds up feeling a tad ridiculous. For example, if presented with someone who has a delusional belief in something objectively, demonstrably false on a factual basis, to the point where acting on their belief makes them a danger to themselves or others ... It is not the case that a different society will make those delusions into true facts. What they need in that moment is probably medication. I have seen people for whom that has definitely been the case, and they show improvement with treatment.
Your position seems to boil down to suggesting since the problem cannot be fixed perfectly, nobody should even try, and meanwhile those who do try are "hysterical".
I read the position as: "The problem can be mitigated, but we shouldn't go so far as to actually try to police people's internal thoughts and feelings. There are some who are so overcome by emotions with this issue, that they would even advocate going that far."
I'd have to politely disagree. Formerly being one of these "hopeless cases", and now being a productive, healthy member of society, I feel like I have some insight into the matter.
Treatment, support and stability help immensely. We do none of that for the must vulnerable members of society. People don't end up like that overnight usually, it takes their mental health being neglected a long time. Often times the trauma starts in childhood. Can you blame them for that?
A real issue is ignorance and the resulting lack of compassion. Everyone is insecure about something, but some people make themselves feel better by judging others. The fact of the matter is we are all a few bad strokes of luck away from squabbling in the gutter. Some egos are too fragile to admit that.
Some unfortunate people may be unable to live in society, but they are in the minority and you don't know if they will respond to treatment until you try.
I am astonished that you put drug dependence in the same category as just plain violent. Mental health issues aren't a moral failing, and treating them as such further ostracizes already marginalized people.
Antisocial behavior arises when people feel rejected by society. Instead of blaming individuals from your position of privilege, perhaps you should consider the society and systems that created them.
I hope you never find out just how thin the line is.
Ultimately this is the consistent problem with the way we deal with mental health problems in general. The solution is to not let it get to crisis levels by proactively addressing problems the same way we deal with physical issues. Imagine if when someone sprained their ankle we demanded they keep walking on it until it rips, and only then do we try to do something about it (ineptly, of course).
No, you are correct, it won't solve the problems. But if someone is having trouble caring about life/work And having trouble making changes to fix it, taking care of mental health, if there is reason, makes it easier to actually make the life changes required or make it easier to find some sort of contentment with your current life.
Depression and anxiety are not individual problems if everyone has them. They’re a reflection of how our society treats people. Unfortunately, taking the problem seriously would involve confronting capitalist power dynamics, so instead we will simply increase funding for medications and prisons.
This highlights something that's made me uncomfortable for a while. In discussions around addiction, suicide, and other mental health outcomes, the focus is almost always placed on stopping the undesirable outcome. They'll put timers that kick people off games, they'll put barriers and nets around bridges people commonly jump from, etc.
What they aren't doing is treating the root cause of the problem: loneliness, listlessness, depression. These are problems of our society and they seem to be getting worse over time. We need to change this. We need to build real communities where people belong. We need to build relationships. We're not doing that though. We're becoming more and more atomized.
1986 - I feel sad. Well that's life. Kills self six weeks later
In other words, it's not that people today are getting treatment for things that people in the past just knew how to live with; people today are getting treatment for things that people in the past died from. People drank themselves to death, or ODed on drugs, or put a rope around their neck, all because they couldn't calm the storm raging inside their head.
I don't understand the medical treatment thing. Why is it so that everything has to be treated? What do you define as ideal? People have different types of personalities and it is necessary in the system. In my opinion it is better to give time to people so that they overcome. We really tend to underestimate the coping capabilities of humans.
That's a very good-spirited answer, but not a very realistic one, I am afraid. Most of the people who exhibit problems of that kind ARE talked to; their parents, children, friends etc are, on average, truly caring and do attempt to help. The sad truth is - a lot of people who gave up on 'life' have damn good reasons to have done so. A lot of them would laugh at you if you try to 'talk' to them, providing they have some laugh left in them --- because most of them actually did hear it all already, and it just wasn't enough.
Another sad truth is: substance abuse actually does solve a lot of problems, just not in a "socially acceptable way". But, well - a lot of people don't care about what's "socially acceptable".
I think the problem is we've built a society though where it's so easy to end up sad and that needs fixed.
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