Monetising Mental Health
The individual-centric approach may be more about monetisation than mental health
Mental health has become mainstream. Suddenly the conversation about mental health is everywhere. Celebrities are talking about their own struggles, launching foundations to counter the stigma around these conversations and offer advice to other individuals. People are posting about their mental health challenges online on social media for the world at large. News reports are preambled by “trigger” warnings, LinkedIn has posts about supportive bosses allowing “mental health” day-offs. And there are many mental health startups on the block.
This is a good thing. And not a good thing. First the good part: it is good that there is greater recognition - and acceptance - of the fact that large numbers of people are struggling in their engagement with the world. This is an issue that clearly needs to be addressed. However, the approach - and this is the not so good bit - is one which takes a largely societal problem and makes it an individual one. There are, of course, individuals who suffer from serious mental disorders and need individual care. However, anxiety, insecurity, alienation, loneliness, listlessness etc even though experienced at an individual level are often a function of the context we are in. In fact the very fact that these are so widespread means that these are societal issues instead of individual ones.
Our engagement with the world is increasingly characterized by some or all of the following: a constant bombardment of information about everything that is happening in the world but without the concomitant context to authenticate or understand that information; glorification of conspicuous consumption; overt aspiration and globalized competition; blurring of the personal with public; unrealistic beauty standards; weakening family ties without alternate sources of similarly automatic community and friendship; transitional and hence less stable personal and professional roles; and sharper differences coexisting with an increasingly confrontational and public style of settling disagreements. All of these changes have happened within an overall normative framework which has weakened traditional institutions of authority while valorizing the individual and her personal experiences, desires and aspirations. Overall our lives now are marked by constant stimuli, competition and fragmentation.
It is thus not unexpected that people are struggling to cope. It is now well acknowledged that social media use causes anxiety and depression in teenage girls. That the constant onslaught of information is reducing our overall attention span. There are similarly other societal factors which are leading to a decline in overall wellbeing. Those factors need to be acknowledged and addressed. Instead we have positioned mental health as an individual exercise which completely obviates the need for structural changes in how we live, work, understand our world and make collective decisions.
This individual-centric approach is not about doing what is in one’s individual control. This is because what is being offered is not an understanding of the world and our relationship with it but something more insular - a disproportionate focus on one’s own experiences, perspectives, feelings. The impetus for this approach may be that the societal problem cannot be commercialized but the individual problem can be through personal therapy, medication, corporate workshops, monetisable “content” and so on. On the other hand, treating “mental health” as a societal problem will set us up for a political exercise which will place us in direct conflict with the status quo with little to no potential for monetisation. This may be too cynical. This is also not to say that there isn't a place for the individual approach but that an intellectually honest exercise will firmly place the personal in the political.
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