mental energy or government spending either way, it’s a cost to bear
There are so many things involved in the onset of poor mental health that are multi-layered and persistent but as with so much in life, especially the mind: finding a root cause is just one way of healing things. For instance, it’s true psychoanalysis has a lot to offer but then a person’s mind can be saved by CBT therapy or a humanistic or existential approach. Still, principal factors are important despite the frailties of zero-sum thinking and in a complex world, trying to grasp the span of need across the planet makes it hard to ignore the social implications that are based, ultimately, on economic systems. It’s easy to see where this is going with millions of households fiscally locked, to matters of the mind.
At the start of his recent book Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis, James Davies talks about the rapport between the drug industry and psychiatry, next to a particular type of government policy. He also suggests that the structural difficulties which the NHS’ Long-Term Plan is trying to address, aren’t necessarily borne of investment issues alone. As a qualified psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, he goes on to look at the feedback loop containing economics and psychiatry and how they’ve established wide-spread thought and high-level policies, over decades.
‘Worldwide, there have been consistently high or even rising incidences of diagnosed mental disorders and increasing mental healthcare service utilization over the last decades, causing a growing burden for healthcare systems and societies. While more individuals than ever are being diagnosed and treated as mentally ill, psychiatric knowledge and practices affect the lives of a rising number of people, gain importance in society as a whole and shape more and more areas of life. This process can be described as the progressing psychiatrization of society.’
Timo Beeker, et al, Psychiatrization of Society: A Conceptual Framework and Call for Transdisciplinary Research
This singular aspect of mental health is so interesting because it’s never lost on anyone, at all, that we live in an irredeemable irony. By this, it means beyond supply and demand and energy crises, the basic fuel of capitalism is low self-esteem in that the system relies on our basic fears to function. We all know this, and that it needs us to prevaricate and humiliate to then overcompensate. Yet, the flipside offers more irony because the system fuels innovation and creativity, too, where competition pushes both wastage and quality as it gaslights and rewards us, in a variety of ways. Again, this isn’t news, but it’s certainly systemic genius and writing about it doesn’t change a thing. We’re programmed to want to be wanted and for many, anything facilitating that will be welcomed, used and abused in as zero-sum a way as necessary.
In other words, whilst we’ll do almost anything to belong, we live in a system telling us daily that not only are we outliers if we don’t upgrade but that beyond hard work – attainment exists through celebrity, organised luck or in some cases, archaic birthright. Well, the first can be quietly eye-rolled, while the second draws a shake of the head. The third one, meanwhile, still defies sense and it has to be said modernity, as well. It seems most of us are quite wise to this now but how do we balance seeking help or interventions for mental-health crises, when we turn on the T.V, open a magazine or swipe in a certain direction, to be told: “Seriously, look at you.” It’s a power struggle and the messages are constant and clear, and it takes work not be defined by them. Of course, the world is full of bizarre contradictions but so many of these contrasts cost some people a lot more than others, in all sorts of ways.
‘First, poverty can lead to mental illness. When someone has no money and is unable to make ends meet or provide for his children, this greatly affects a person’s mental state. Just imagine not being able to secure the needs of your children, such as education, food, clothes. This has a major effect on parents’ mental state. This also affects children who would have nothing.’
A Lebanese man in Beqaa, Understanding Factors Affecting Mental Health in Beirut and Baqaa, 2020
Ultimately, whilst easier said than done, the only solution is to push on as best you can and to never give up. Naturally, you may never reach your goals and that’s life but so long as you don’t stop trying, you may still be in with a chance. Yet, ‘might’ is the word because there are no guarantees, and it’s not about getting the express lift to the top floor with a lottery ticket, either. Obviously, good luck to you if you try, but you could be standing in the lobby forever. No, working hard is contingent on having good physical and mental well-being, whether you’re sitting in an office or working on a building site: meaning the problem of imbalance should perhaps be tackled from both ends. That would mean giving the emotional welfare of the consumer as much priority as the system gives, to a person’s pocket.
So, with the economics of mental health sprawling on a spectrum it can mean guardrails are needed, to keep the general public safe. Risk and protective factors, therefore, expose or shield people respectively in terms of a lack of access to things like transport, medicine and education against more welcoming experiences like: positive role models, access to services and financial security. It makes a difference, where:
‘Growing international evidence shows that mental ill-health and poverty interact in a negative cycle in low-income and middle-income countires. However, little is known about the interventions that are needed to break this cycle.’
Poverty and Mental Disorders: Breaking The Cycle
So, with lots of things leading to physical-health issues, direct links to mental health are inevitable and no more so than if physical health deteriorates. In fact, it seems your mental well-being is often linked to other people’s relationships with money, as well as the wider economy. Yet, under various complexities, neither your mind nor fiscal juggling operates at maximum efficiency, which seems to be part of the problem.
It’s true, governments around the world are locked in a constant battle while trying to minimise the prevalence of poor mental health. In 2020, the Journal of World Psychiatry carried a study called: ‘Economics and Mental Health: The Current Scenario’ and within it, a section header states – ‘Why economics is relevant’. The content adds that the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services is a foundation of the subject and its connection to mental health, is both intricate and bilateral.
In a 2022, jointly produced report: ‘The Economic Case for Investing in the Prevention of Mental Health Conditions in the UK’, the Mental Health Foundation, the Care Policy and Evaluation Centre and the London School of Economics and Political Science – calculated the yearly loss of output to the UK economy, to be just under £120 billion. With self-injury and suicide, the number rose by six billion.
‘The global cost of mental health conditions in 2010 was estimated at US$ 2.5 trillion, with the cost projected to surge to US$ 6.0 trillion by 2030.’
World Economic Forum, The Global Burden of Non-communicable Diseases
These are all staggering numbers and with so many competing factors through endless, co-existing spells of mental-health issues and economic cycles: it must be difficult to unravel the knots when it comes to governance, policymaking and implementation. For every pound spent, for example, fighting an individual’s life struggle in social drift theory, the return on that investment is a long-term calculation.
We may or may never solve the mental-health vulnerabilities riding genetic, social and environmental problems but at least we have the tools, to mostly know what we’re looking at.
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Images:
Childhood Poverty, by Suraphat, Pexels – Main Image
City Streets, by Sulox32, Pixabay
Thai Fishing Village, by Karolina, Pexels
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