by Käthe Kollwitz, 1900.
A dangerous world
In the west today it is common to hear acronyms such as ADHD, PTSD and OCD surrounding mental health and especially in discussions of depression and anxiety. While a wider discussion about mental health is useful to those suffering, the question of its cause and origination is often neglected.
For instance, what part does the unequal system of capitalism play? Afterall, the entire foundation of our society is predicated on the exploitation of man upon man to create a world in which wealth is accumulated in the hands of a few people who use it to repress everyone else. In a world where profit is the sole motive for the people on top, the rest of us must try to survive in an environment that is becoming increasingly competitive and precarious.
Anxiety and depression are very obviously conditions that stem from such a dangerous and unstable world. These illnesses are a logical response to an illogical world. When faced with limited job prospects, mounting costs and debt and no means to advance, and being one pay cheque from becoming penniless or homeless, anxiety and depression are the likely result.
Illnesses such as OCD and schizophrenia, while they may have some genetic predisposition, can be activated by environment, and stress build-up is a factor. For instance a child who suffers relentless bullying may develop schizophrenia in later years, or dissociative identity disorder (the so-called split personality). It is well documented that across many countries and decades of research, schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and psychosis are consistently associated with:
• higher rates in poorer populations,
• higher rates in densely urban environments,
• and greater social marginalization overall.
The relationship is complex: poverty and city living do not simply ‘cause’ schizophrenia in a direct linear way. Researchers generally see psychosis as emerging from an interaction of biological vulnerability with chronic social and environmental stressors. Some of the strongest findings are linked to poverty and social deprivation. People living in deprived socioeconomic conditions show higher rates of psychotic disorders than wealthier populations. This includes:
• unstable housing,
• unemployment,
• food insecurity,
• childhood adversity,
• exposure to violence,
• chronic stress,
• social exclusion.
In a world of rampant inequality, it is inevitable that these illnesses materialise and proliferate. Could ADHD be caused by too many distractions? In fact one of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD is an inability to stay in long term work and losing multiple jobs. In most instances, losing one’s job on multiple occasions is not the fault of the worker but the working conditions inherent in our capitalist society. With zero hours contacts and jobs that are no longer guaranteed for life, this diagnostic criterion is very easy to meet.
The dangerous term ‘neurodiversity’
About 20 – 23 percent of adults in England currently meet criteria for mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression; even higher amongst younger adults Whether these statistics are real or inflated – driven by a target oriented mental health system looking for funding in a crumbling and chronically underfunded NHS – it is hard to say. The fact remains that more and more people are seeking mental health diagnoses and profit-based private health firms are likely to give them the diagnosis they are looking for because it means alienating them and selling them expensive therapies and medications.
While the suffering is real for many, the question is never raised about the cause of this epidemic, of how to change society! Would there be less instances of mental health difficulties if the balance of forces in society were redressed? Would people in a safer and non-exploitative world have fewer things to be anxious about? Do people in North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, China etc suffer with these same conditions to the same degree?
Instead of exploring and resolving the root causes of this growing wave of mental incapacity, bourgeois society promotes the labels assigned to it. Neurodiverse and neurotypical; these terms have become a trope to splinter the working class, creating division based on one’s mental health status. Often YouTube content creators and Instagram influencers tout that they are different and somehow consequently ‘special’ because they have these traits; traits that are not considered to be normal because they are mental health related.
This desire for uniqueness is another symptom of late-stage capitalist society. Children are asked in school what traits make them special. In the job market phrases such as ‘sell yourself’ to acquire the desired role are commonplace. It’s no wonder we are all becoming individualised and desiring to be unique from our peers.
The problem, however, is not that people desire individuality but that they are actively encouraged to see their uniqueness as a special trait, one that separates them from others. There are endless memes where people describe their special and unique qualities and label themselves neurodiverse, while pointing to others and saying, “these are neurotypical behaviours”.
Aren’t we all unique? The human brain is imbued with plasticity, which means it remoulds itself depending on the environment. For instance if someone is trying to learn an instrument, their brain will start growing new neuro-connections to help cope with the new challenge. No two brains are the same and apart from identical twins, none of us is the same.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t people struggling with mental health disorders, of course there are. But terms like neurotypical and neurodiverse aren’t helpful or even scientific. They are weapons of control. Whether a person is born ‘different’ or as ‘one of the crowd’ serves no purpose except to leave an indelible label of differentiation and a premise that there is no room for change. But as Heraclitus said, the only constant is change.
A fundamental problem with this limited viewpoint is that if a person can’t change, how do they ever get better? There are many people who have mental illnesses who find a way around their difficulties and learn to cope, despite the fact some problems might still endure. A person with ADHD may keep a diary to help manage their time, a person with OCD might utilise their mobile phone to take pictures, reminding them that they did indeed lock the door etc.
People with mental health can change, grow and get better. We are not either neurotypical or neurodiverse, just as no one is either truly an introvert or extrovert. Our behaviours are not limited to one label or another yet quite often being labelled neurodiverse is a route to becoming inactive. A diagnosis often makes one’s mental health problem become primary and a barrier to the outside world. The person fears they cannot get a job because how will they cope in a fast-paced work environment? They cannot go to a social occasion because they fear people, that they cannot leave the house because the outside world is scary with inconvenient interactions. The diagnosis becomes the perimeter, the prison, that the sufferer lives within.
Again this is not to say that these fears are unfounded. Many stigmas in workplaces are attached to mental illness, making it harder to seek a job when mentally ill, or in some cases physically ill. But these are problems of capitalism, not of the mentally ill themselves. The myriad mental health diagnoses are being pushed in such a way as to make people inert, to make a demographic of the population who believe they can’t act because they are ill and will always be different and marginalised.
What socialist countries do differently
In existing socialist states and even in those where socialism once existed, most of the population work, and a job is considered to be a human right. In the USSR for example, many stressors were taken away from the individual: housing, education, the right to work, food and clean water, and medical care, these were all considered to be human rights. Soviet rents at most were 3%-5% of a workers wage with utilities provided by the state. In the UK rent can be anywhere between 25% to 33% of a workers wage without utilities considered.
This freedom meant that workers in the Soviet Union did not have the worry of losing their home or being without heating, of wondering how they would survive. They had access to cheap transport to get to their job, and the elderly or sick were looked after properly by the state and they didn’t have to fight every year to have their benefits renewed. They were secure and that is a massive benefit to one’s mental wellbeing.
Under these conditions mental ill health was not such a problem. People were not anxious or depressed because they had access to varied and interesting work with easy retraining. The population enjoyed 99% literary rates, stable housing, access to recreational facilities and beautiful green spaces, and a rich cultural life. Many individual labours such as having to cook at home or raise a child were socialised. For instance canteens serving nutritious food could be accessed in workplaces so women could avoid cooking if they so wished but still provide the family with hot, nutritious food. Crèches were in workplaces too so mothers with careers could have their children nearby but cared for by properly trained people.
The DPRK takes some of these things further with state-owned housing being totally free to the person or people living there along with free cultural activities, free education at all levels, and free medical care. Imagine how much more accessible the world would be to everyone if we no longer needed to fear being made homeless or jobless. How we’d be freer to choose our careers without money being a driving factor. How much more well we’d all be if we had proper medical care, and a world accessible to those who are disabled in some sort of way.
By Helen Astin-Hardman
“It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation, and oppression of one person by another; where there is no unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal, and any other form of freedom can exist for real and not on paper.”
– Josef Stalin
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