The Politics of Personal Distress

A couple of months ago I came across an excellent article in the Guardian newspaper by UK clinical psychologist Sanah Ahsan entitled ‘I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health’. The article is well worth reading:

‘Society’s understanding of mental health issues locates the problem inside the person – and ignores the politics of their distress’

We are living, we’re told, through a “mental health crisis”. Mental health services cannot cope with the explosion of demand over the past two years: 1.6 million people are on waiting lists, while another 8 million need help but can’t even get on these lists. Even children are showing up at A&E in despair, wanting to die.

But there is another way to see this crisis – one that doesn’t place it firmly in the realm of the medical system. Doesn’t it make sense that so many of us are suffering? Of course it does: we are living in a traumatising and uncertain world. The climate is breaking down, we’re trying to stay on top of rising living costs, still weighted with grief, contagion and isolation, while revelations about the police murdering women and strip-searching children shatter our faith in those who are supposed to protect us.

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‘High Price: Thinking about Drugs with a Social Conscience’ by Carl Hart

I often read about psychoactive drugs being ‘evil’. However, drugs themselves don’t have the capacity to be evil. They are a powder, not a person.

Moreover, the psychoactive effects of drugs are not fixed. As I have described in an article on this website, drug effects are not just dependent on the chemical substance itself, but also on the person and the setting in which the drug is taken.

Drugs are often used by people to cope with psychological pain in their life. For example, many people who become addicted to the pain killer heroin have been abused in their lives. Many people drink alcohol excessively to help them deal with problems in their life. Sadly, society focuses on the symptoms (e.g. drug use) rather than the underlying problem (e.g. trauma).

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