The celebration of mental health day is a good occasion to raise the improvements that our care system requires, but we should not lose sight of the fact that our own social model has elements that are clearly neurotizing, elements that go against mental health.
It is clear that we need many more professionals in the area of mental health, psychiatrists and psychologists, nursing staff and social workers given the increase in demand that we have had in the last year. and that the approach must be biopsychosocial. But at the same time we have to be critical and analyze the causes of this increase in mental health problems that go to consultations
I believe that we must have a proactive mental health model, which not only teaches to relax and calm down, or to consider that all psychological problems come from limitations in the subject’s abilities, but also to understand the social model in which we live and its influence on mental health. A very problematic social model for mental health, as I will comment below, for several reasons:
- There is not only an epidemic of Covid 19, there is also an epidemic of toxic social networks. Of course, social networks have very positive elements, but a dark side of manipulation, deceit, hatred, the creation of tensions, complexes, insecurities, which pose a serious risk to mental health, is increasingly emerging on social networks.
We are seeing it these days in the USA with the revelations of Frances Haugen, a Facebook executive who explained that there were company studies that showed that 32% of adolescents said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse , more depressed.
As Lindsay Crouse points out in the New York Times (10-8-21) the message that Instagram gives these young women is: you are full of physical defects but we have products to fix them. Here you have our consumer offer, the beauty industry. It is therefore a commercial manipulation. Today, any photo is subject to scrutiny, comparison and evaluation in the form of likes and comments and this significantly affects mental health
The same also happens in relation to food. One of the areas in which more mental disorders emerge among the young population. As this author says “I can still look at a plate of food and instantly assign a number of calories to it in my mind” such is the toxic campaign of pressure on food that falls on young women especially
And worst of all: many of these messages are transmitted under the guise of referring to health or well-being. There is talk of “body positivity”, positive body health, when in fact it is misleading advertising and attempts to addict social networks
Haugen has also revealed that Facebook favors hateful content because it works very well for people to become addicted to the network. Hate makes cash. But hate is very destructive on a mental level. Haugen has accused the company of stoking violence in Asia as in the Myanmar case, where Facebook finally admitted its role as a deadly weapon in an army campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority that led to the assassination. rape and dispossession. Similarly, Nigerian authorities say fake news being spread on Facebook is killing people, as groups attack each other in retaliation for atrocities that never happened.
All this situation of manipulation and toxicity of social networks affects especially vulnerable people, especially minors with relationship problems, loneliness, who live in crisis situations… For these people, these toxic social networks can be hell on your mobile, hell in your pocket
To such an extent this is so that these social networks are being equated, due to their toxic effects, contaminants for vulnerable groups, to tobacco.
We already know that it took years to get the tobacco companies in order. But it has largely been achieved. Today, these toxic social networks seriously contaminate mental health. This situation has to change or there will be no mental health professionals for so many people affected.
- The entire area of the invented needs, artificial needs that are never satisfied, caused by the dominant social system, advanced capitalism. In addition, the subject is impelled that these invented needs have to be satisfied now: it is the famous “I’ll take it with me”. And this threatens our model of mind that comes from evolution and that has structured processes that take time to develop, such as decision-making or the case of duels, for example.
- There is a tendency for prevention to become hypochondrization. The WHO definition of Alma-Ata (1978) that health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being has been used, in a distorted way, stating that any difficulty or problem is already a mental disorder,
This has led to the medicalization and psychiatrization of everyday life: everything is mental illness. It does not differentiate stress and grief from mental disorder
in relation to this There is an old joke in medicine that says that health is a state of well-being that does not bode well: in the end you always end up having health problems. In other words, the very idea of prevention must be relativized
- The loneliness epidemic. The great use of psychoactive drugs in the population that lives alone, especially elderly women, is well known. They actually make up for the lack of social support with the pills.
It is a classic in health psychology studies that loneliness correlates with a greater number of physical and mental illnesses. Humans have a structured psyche to live in a group and loneliness is experienced, unconsciously interpreted, as a sign of danger. Thus it is known that loneliness tends to raise one’s blood pressure, as a defensive reaction to a situation that is interpreted as dangerous, difficult.
All these mentioned problems are generated by our society and significantly affect mental health. For this reason, when celebrating Mental Health Day, it is important to also criticize the very model of society as a generator of mental suffering and mental disorder.
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