The Market Logic of Mental Health

Continued from page 14 so much the intrinsic qualities of these activities that leads to self-confidence, but instead their connection to our ingrained market-based ethic. As I have shown, “healthy” activities are considered productive because they aid one’s ability to work, which must come first according to our society’s values. Because we are implanted with the idea that we are only valuable if we are working, it doesn’t make sense for doctors to ask people suffering from emotional problems to put health first and work second.

So, if pursuing healthy activities won’t help mental health, then what will? The answer is, increasingly, medication. Mental healthcare has become enfolded into the umbrella of Western medicine and is increasingly being addressed with diagnoses and medication, just like other health problems. This comes with some advantages, including a growing availability of treatment and a forthcoming social acceptance of it.

But framing emotional problems medically also comes with its own generally close-minded attitude and an unwillingness to acknowledge alternative treatments, such as talk therapy or other forms of holistic healing. Psychiatry, far from a holistic practice, has instead become cold and calculated; it’s an analytical science that identifies symptoms, classifies people into boxes, and prescribes medication designed to address those symptoms instead of trying to solve problems at their source. Psychological problems often have their root in a traumatic experience, unresolved fear, or a misunderstanding of one’s own feelings, and these issues cannot be resolved simply by addressing the anxiety or depression they may cause. In fact, even though the administration of psychiatric drugs has increased significantly over the last twenty years, the prevalence of mental health disorders has not.

As opposed to psychiatry, which involves scarcely more than taking a tiny pill each morning, talk therapy oftentimes requires intensely painful and prolonged emotional work. Therefore, when people weigh their options, committing to therapy understandably seems like an onerous prospect because of its high costs — many who want therapy are unable to afford it, and even for those who can, it represents a huge investment of time and attention.

This brings us back to the idea that in our society, productivity and mental well-being are at odds. Although therapy is designed to help us find the root of our problems and ultimately become happier and more fulfilled, it’s hard to be working a job when you must at the same time be doing the exhausting emotional labor that therapy entails. As a result, the system does not make room for it. In the mainstream, emotional growth is not a valued economic activity, and it is therefore highly preferable for people to use medication to curb emotional issues or to simply do nothing at all.

I am not advocating for the dismantling of the structures we have built to help people who are suffering from mental health crises. Psychiatry has its shortcomings, but its straightforward approach can nevertheless be a source of great comfort for people. For me, it was an immense relief to know that a licensed professional was addressing my issue using clinically proven methods, and that my condition was essentially guaranteed to improve. Up until I had sought psychiatric treatment, I was relying wholly on myself to fix what I had identified as an emergent fatal flaw, and psychiatry took some of the responsibility of “repairing” myself out of my hands. Since being on medication I’ve achieved more control over my mind, and as a result talk therapy has become an effective tool for making more holistic emotional progress. For this reason, psychiatry should be seen as just one of many useful tools in combating mental illness, as opposed to both the start and end of treatment.

However, it is evident that in order to truly improve our collective mental health, expectations about how to be a member of society must change. This goes deeper than just eliminating the stigma around mental health crises or medication. Even if people are becoming okay with the idea of being in a mental health crisis (due in part to the shift in narrative), they are still not okay with the consequences of it — the loss of conventional productivity. We must ease the expectation of universal and sustained economic productivity that drives people to hate themselves en masse. We need to change the way we define value. People must be made to feel okay with taking time for themselves and using time as they wish.

This means dismantling the idea of work as the end-all be-all of life. It may be a tired sentiment, but we should be working to live, not living to work.

In my own case, the pressure I put on myself to meet expectations was what fueled my mental health crisis. The event that initiated my anxious episode eventually became irrelevant, as the anxiety became entirely self-perpetuating — I was afraid of the fear itself, and stuck on the idea that the fear would keep me from ever being valuable again. It is far too easy for people to feel like they are broken in this world. The truth is that there is no way for a person to be broken — there is no wrong way for a person to be.

by Alice Burg