7 minute read
Mental Illness in the Modern Western Society
By David Ekelund
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That is a quote from the documentary Future shock, which elaborates on the prevalent and increasing stress experienced among the population in today’s information society. The fact that this documentary was released back in 1972 goes to show that questions regarding stress and mental illness have been around for decades. Yet, does it not feel like mental illness is an ever-growing problem in our modern societies? Is the stressful lifestyle that we experience in the age of information to blame for the seemingly growing pandemic of mental illness – or is it possible that our perception of mental illness and sense of misery has changed?
Drawing on notions from the renowned Swedish sociologist Roland Paulsen and the Swedish psychiatrist Christian Rück, it is obvious that the contemporary state of mental illness, as described above, is a complex and contested topic. Some of the most prominent findings that seem to explain why global mental illness has worsened stretches from material welfare, self-fulfilment and increased secularism to the scientific-based society and altering attitudes of mental health conditions. The growing number of possible reasons behind the issue of global mental illness makes it more urgent than ever to discuss and seek answers to how we can cope with this burning topic.
In 1990, depression was the fourth leading cause of disability worldwide after respiratory diseases, diarrheal diseases and prenatal complications. 20 years later in 2010, it had become the second leading cause of illness. Finally, in 2017 the leading cause of illness was no longer a somatic disease. In only a decade, the global number of clinical depressions had increased by about 20 percent, making it the number one leading cause of disabilities in the world. Only a couple of years before these results were published, The World Health Organization (WHO), believed that it would take at least another 10 years before clinical depression would become the most common disability in the world. Whether the unexpected acceleration is due to some detrimental changes in our way of living or rather is grounded in improved methods to collect data is a contested question. However, what is undisputed is the fact that the rapid spread of mental illness is highly concentrated in certain parts of the world.
Data from WHO shows that the most common diagnoses of mental illness seem to follow a socio-economic and geographical pattern: the wealthier the country, the greater the proportion of inhabitants who meet the criteria for various diagnoses. The World Mental Health Survey carried out by the WHO shows that 17 out of 18 mental disorders are more prevalent in high-income countries than in low and lower-middle-income countries. However, contrary to what one might believe, this does not confirm that mental illness is more likely to emerge as a result of higher incomes. Nevertheless, there seems to be a clear correlation when analysing nations’ living standards in monetary terms and diagnoses of mental illness. This raises the question: what may be the underlying reasons for this correlation?
According to Roland Paulsen, one answer to this broad and complex issue may be found in our well-structured and eternally scheduled way of living our lives. In brief, modern human beings tend to analyse events that have happened in the past and events that will occur in the next weeks, months and years to come. This constant way of planning and analysing the past and the future can, according to Paulsen, lead to despair and anxiety. The main reason why eternal scheduling and contemplating can be harmful is the abundance of life choices it creates. Fundamental questions like what university to attend, what friends and family to prioritize and what extracurricular activities to engage in easily turn into dilemmas such as: how will these choices affect my future? Paulsen pinpoints a crucial theme that is very relevant in our contemporary life – namely the constant search and realization of ourselves. The following quote encapsulates Paulsen’s line of reasoning:
How is this associated with the correlation between mental illness and high living standards, one may ask? Well, Paulsen argues that the modern human being, in the developed part of the world, simply has enough time on their hands to rationalize, question and contemplate about our existence in a way that we could not do in premodern societies due to lack of resources and time. In today’s wealthy modern societies, we have the “privilege” to analyse and cast doubt upon every decision that we make in life. Paulsen finds a second answer to our endless dubieties in the societal process of disenchantment, a notion developed by the German sociologist Max Weber. In brief, it explains the cultural rationalization that has increased to be a result of the devaluation of religion.
In today’s secularized Western society, scientific understanding has become the dominant way of reasoning, whereas beliefs no longer uniformly hold the answers in our lives. Paulsen argues that the fundamental logic of science, cause and effect, has dismantled what used to be the most prevailing meaning in life – our belief in an omnipotent power. Since the foundation of our modern and secular lives are based on cause and effect, the relationship that explains that one thing makes something else happen, every act and every possible scenario in the future is solely dependent upon the decisions that we make every second of our life. Although this mechanical way of interpreting our way of living can make a lot of sense to people, myself included, it is not difficult to understand that it may also be a source of anxiety and disbelief.
Another person who has been elaborating on why mental illness seems to follow an increasing tendency in the Western world and Sweden, in particular, is the psychiatrist Christian Rück. According to him, a number of Swedish studies show that mental illness is not increasing. However, the number of diagnoses and prescriptions of pharmaceutical drugs have seen a dramatic rise during the last decades. This conclusion is also in line with a global survey carried out by the Dutch university of Dordrecht. The survey was conducted in high-income countries and shows how the prevalence of general well-being has not increased, whereas prescriptions of drugs have surged in recent years. According to Rück, one reason behind the fact that prescriptions have expanded can be found in linguistics. He argues that our all-encompassing use of the term mental illness for everything from sorrow to the most severe form of depression undermines the true meaning of the words. This blurred distinction has widened the spectrum of mental health conditions that require pharmaceutical drugs for their treatment. In addition to the indistinct usage of the term mental illness, Rück believes that there has been a shift in the perception of misery in modern western societies. In the current state-of-the-art society, people seem to believe that it is possible to abolish misery. Since so much has been improved and perfected in our everyday lives in such a short period of time, why would it not be possible to abolish misery once and for all? According to Rück, this reasoning is disconnected from reality since suffering in various ways is a fundamental part of being human. Ultimately, what has happened is that people have turned to various forms of prescribed drugs instead as if it would be the antidote to their sufferings. Though Rück acknowledges that antidepressants and other drugs are effective for certain people, he is concerned with the overprescription of drugs. This too is a tendency that is observed in many other high-income countries.
Can the reason, for one out of ten people in Sweden taking some form of pharmaceutical drugs to treat mental illness, be found in the overprescription of drugs? Or is it rather a symptom of a cultural shift? The answers to these questions are more or less impossible to confirm. Personally, I believe that we must question the way we understand mental illness at the very core and that we need to embark on a more holistic approach. Initially, we should start by revising the term mental illness in order to comprehend its diverse and wide-ranging form. This should be followed up by a large-scale societal analysis of potential tendencies that are detrimental to our mental health similar to Paulsen notions. Although the roots to the issue of mental illness are intertwined and complex, it is nonetheless an ever-present societal development that needs to be further discussed and revised in order to be dealt with.
