Is mental health now an acceptable target for demonisation?

The former UK prime minister, Tony Blair, won’t shut up, go away and have a quiet retirement will he? Nope, Blair always seems to have something to opine on, from his obsession with digital identity as the panacea for all our ills (it’s not) through to digitising every aspect of our lives. Then there’s the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change which is basically a World Economic Forum front to drive the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But oh no, that’s not enough for him, is it?

Blair is now shooting his mouth off about people supposedly self-diagnosing mental health symptoms in order to claim benefits. Which a cursory bit of research will reveal doesn’t happen in the simplistic way he, and too many people in the mainstream media, seem to think it does. That hasn’t stopped a number of commentators piling in to support what Blair has to say about people self-diagnosing their mental health issues. One example of this pile on is this piece: The mental health industry rewards a cult of victimhood - Celia Walden | 13.1.25. I won’t quote from this piece because I don’t want to spread the bile the likes of Blair and Walden are only too happy to do. I would also advise only reading it if you feel strong enough to cope with a journalist and quoted sources, including Blair, who seem to be totally devoid of empathy.

Yes, there may well be an increase in people self-diagnosing their mental health symptoms. Instead of jumping on the band-waggon of mocking and demonising these people, any self respecting journalist and commentator should be taking a few steps back to ask what is it about contemporary society that’s leading to this. Sadly, it would appear that self respecting journalists willing to ask and answer some meaningful questions about the dysfunctional society we live in are in short supply. Too many commentators and so called journalists would rather demonise people with mental health issues than face up to some harsh truths about the kind of world we live in.

A growing number of people are struggling with the battle to find secure, long term housing in an economy and society that sees housing as an investment opportunity as opposed to a basic necessity. It should be patently obvious that being permanently stressed about housing isn’t exactly going to be doing anyone’s mental health any favours, shouldn’t it? Then there’s the increasing precarity of employment with people on short term or zero hours contracts. Living in permanent stress over whether you are earning enough to be able to cover your bills, including the rent, isn’t exactly going to be doing anyone’s mental health any favours is it?

Then there’s the prevailing mindset that judges people’s worth solely on their contribution through work. That’s work that contributes to the bottom line mind you, not the socially necessary kind of work such as caring, community gardening and the like that actually make the world a better place to live in. So, if you’re not contributing to the bottom line, in today’s dysfunctional and increasingly dystopian society, you’re seen as a burden. With his kind of societal judgement, is it any wonder that the self worth of those whose work and activity doesn’t contribute to the bottom line collapses, triggering a mental health crisis?

Then there’s wage labour. The kind of work that either contributes directly towards the bottom line, or through education, health and other public services, delivers the workers needed to contribute towards the bottom line. This can range from the physical graft of jobs that really need doing such as building, farming and the like all the way through to bullshit jobs that, if they disappeared, would quite possibly not be missed… Workplace culture can all too often be toxic. That applies to the pressure you’re under fulfilling orders in a warehouse through to coming up with creative concepts in a high pressured advertising agency. Managers who throw their weight around and toadying co-workers who are only too happy to stab you in the back can make working life absolute hell. Is it any surprise that in an increasingly fast paced, toxic work culture, more people are experiencing mental health issues?

It’s not just me who thinks that societal dysfunction is a major contributory towards mental illness, far from it. There’s this:

Dr. Jessica Taylor | @DrJessTaylor

“Perhaps one of the most curious responses I get whilst discussing trauma is when people are shocked that mental illnesses are not caused by vague ‘chemical imbalances’ and then say to me, ‘Well, then what is the cause?’

The answer is so unbelievably simple. It stares us in the face every day. Human suffering. Stress. Abuse. Debt. Poverty. Violence. Pressures. Relationship breakdowns. Loss. Trauma. Isolation. Loneliness. Oppression. Illness.

When you place humans under stress, their emotions, behaviours and thoughts change. This is obvious.

And yet they respond with disbelief, as if they want it to be something more complicated. They would be more comfortable if I made up a disorder or illness of the brain, or gave them some convoluted, inaccessible answer about neurons and genetics.

Anything but look at life through the humane lens which validates the huge amount of trauma and distress in each of our lives - and seeks to support humans as our equals.”

We live in an increasingly atomised society. It’s becoming harder to maintain a sense of community, the kind where you know people will back you up if you fall on hard times. Feeling rootless and disconnected from where you live is definitely not good for anyone’s mental health, is it? What’s also not good is when face to face communication is increasingly being replaced by online, digital, so called ‘communication’. Particularly when the medium for that ‘communication’ is a massively flawed social media system that seems to foster division rather than genuine relationships. It should be noted that there are some corners of social media where genuine communication can take place and real relationships can form in a relatively safe environment but, these environments are fragile and under threat. Which is why with our sister project, At the grassroots, we place a lot of emphasis on the need to build community solidarity and create a sense of belonging, as argued in this piece: A sense of belonging 27.10.24.

Modern life is not conducive to building and maintaining a sense of community. With many people having to commute to and from work, when they get home of an evening, understandably all they want to do for the few hours before they go to bed is chill out before repeating the cycle the next day. That just leaves the weekends that are all too often devoted to life admin and household chores, leaving not a lot of time for leisure, let alone any kind of activity that would help to build a sense of community. On top of this, a fair few people are obliged to move around the country every few years to find the work they're qualified to do. The consequence of this is that they find little time to put down roots and build the kind of relationships that are a part of building a community.

That's how the powers that be want it. They want us to be obedient, atomised production and consumption units in thrall to the machine. They want us sitting in of an evening and at the weekends consuming 'entertainment' and 'news' rather than talking and interacting with each other. If we go out, they'll nudge and prod us towards corporate dominated forms of entertainment as opposed to anything with real roots and meaning.

We also live in a world that has increasingly lost touch with nature. This is a process that started with the Industrial Revolution and has been accelerating since then. When we lose touch with nature, we start to lose touch with who we really are. Disassociation with the natural world that supports us and worryingly, disassociation from our bodies, can only lead to a dystopian future where you have to fit in with the high tech matrix just to survive. Which raises the question - just what are we surviving for?

Last but by no means least, we’re still reaping the bitter harvest from the atomising experience of the Covid ‘crisis’ lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Lockdowns that for teenagers, interrupted their developmental years where they would normally be socialising and learning about relationships. Instead of doing what teenagers for generations have done, many were forced into a crippling isolation where the only means of communication was online. Some people are still in denial about this but, it should be blatantly obvious this would have had a massively detrimental effect on the mental health of many teenagers and young adults who had to endure this isolation. This is the demographic that’s allegedly ‘self-diagnosing’ with mental health problems. I’d say they’re the demographic who knew exactly what was being done to them and have the honesty to come out and admit to the consequences of that. That’s something that Mr. ‘lock down harder’ Blair really should have thought about before opening his mouth. But, that would require a significant degree of humility - a word that Blair has no understanding of whatsoever...

Blair and his acolytes played a not insignificant part in creating the results driven, de-humanising, shitty, dysfunctional and increasingly dystopian world we currently have to endure. For him to turn round and somehow imply that people suffering mental health issues as a consequence of the stress of having to survive in an increasingly dystopian world are faking it, is more than a bit rich, it’s f**king cruel. There’s no way Blair and his ilk will ever admit that the world they have played a part in creating is toxic beyond belief. Instead, they’re quite happy to create a social climate where it’s acceptable to demonise people with mental health issues. That’s regardless of the suffering this causes...

The attitude that those who suffer mental illness as a consequence of living in a screwed up world need to ‘get a grip’ has to not only be robustly challenged, it has to be defeated. Mental illness isn’t some individual failing. A large part of it is a consequence of living in a toxic, dysfunctional and increasingly dystopian world. One where it’s understandable that anyone with any degree of sensitivity would want to withdraw from. It’s this screwed up world we currently have to endure that needs to be changed and, the sooner that can happen, the better things will be...