Toxic Politics vs Mental Health in Arizona January 17, 2011
Posted by alana in Health Care, Mental Illness, Violence.5 comments
A few people have suggested to me that I write about the Arizona shooter who took aim at US Rep Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people on January 8, perhaps as part of a discussion about alienation. The reason I haven’t wanted to do that is because, from a political perspective, I find it so frustrating and hypocritical for the mainstream media to discuss this case as a “mental health issue.”
There is no doubt in my my mind that the shooter, Jared Lee Lougher, is a sick man. And I would be the first to argue that putting more resources into mental health services would reduce crime substantially, both in terms of prevention and rehabilitation. And I wouldn’t argue with the recent spate of articles decrying the stigma against mental illness that prevents the mentally ill from seeking help, and pointing out that adequate mental help is not available to most people in this country anyway. All of those things are true. But in this case, the media rhetoric focusing on the Arizona shooting as an indictment of the mental health system in America serves a hypocritical purpose, and that is to shift the blame away from the unabashed incitements to violence coming from right-wing celebrities like Sarah Palin and Tea Party candidates like Jesse Kelly, who invited his constituents to come and shoot an automatic rifle with him while he was running against Giffords, saying “Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.” In her insightful article about the politics of hate that created the context for this shooting, Nicole Colson writes: “The shooting in Arizona has demonstrated in the most shocking way how easily the hate-filled rhetoric of supposedly respectable politicians can spill over into violence. Whether it’s the wave of Islamophobia that leads to the stabbing of a New York City cab driver, or a political assault on immigrant rights that turns into actual anti-immigrant violence, or an anti-abortion climate in which doctors can be assassinated as they attend church services, none of these acts occur in a vacuum.” Focusing on Jared Lee Lougher as an individual with specific mental health issues is a way of pretending that this tragedy did happen in a vacuum, allowing the powerful people who build their careers on spreading hate to continue to incite violence without being held accountable. (more…)
The Logic of Suicide January 10, 2011
Posted by alana in Depression, Mental Illness, Suicide.4 comments
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
I was struck with the idea and inspiration to start this blog when one of my closest friends posted this quote on facebook in early October. It encapsulates the deep contradictions inherent in life under capitalism, and it brought to light for me a deep concern that I had never quite consciously articulated to myself before. I realized that there are two ways to interpret that statement, and my great fear is that the radical leftists who want to see a better society – the most important people in the world to me – might experience suffering ill health as a form of protest. I don’t believe that the debilitating pain of depression, mania, anxiety, schizophrenia, or any other mental illness can be considered a form of resistance to adjusting oneself to this sick society. On the contrary, refusing to care for or prioritize one’s mental health is as counterproductive to changing society as refusing medical attention for a gunshot wound is to a soldier returning to battle (or going home alive). Anecdotally, my experience is that the people I know who show the greatest concern for others’ oppression around the world are also the least concerned about their own mental health. People have a right to be proud when they are able to function well enough to live their lives and devote themselves to causes they believe in while suffering significant disability – but I think we have to be careful not to hang on to misery and wear our suffering like a badge of honor or as a sign of refusal to accept all that is sick in the world. We can be healthy without adjusting our radical perspective, and we’ll be better equipped to fight for a better world if we aren’t swinging with one arm tied behind our backs, struggling within ourselves at the same time we struggle against our oppressors.
When I read the suicide note written by programmer Bill Zeller that was published online by his request when he took his life last week, it was his clear, lucid rationalism that broke my heart. Our society encourages and rewards the ability to be logical, detached, analytical, calculating, and unemotional, and Zeller accomplished this so perfectly that he became a PhD candidate at Princeton University, was a very successful programmer, and could isolate himself as a mere variable that should be eliminated for the greater good. In his letter, he points out that this ability to make coldly detached decisions about whether a person should live or die could as easily result in homicide as suicide – and by extension we can say that the same kind of emotional detachment is a requirement for waging war. Culturally, we are led to believe that emotions are chaotic and irrational, that this is bad, and that “bad behavior,” like suicide or murder is therefore irrational or insane. I think Bill Zeller’s well-composed letter explaining his rationalization for his suicide is one of the most poignant examples I’ve seen making the case that suicide is ultra-rational, and that rationality is not the ultimate good. (more…)
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Worse Before It Gets Better December 17, 2010
Posted by alana in Depression, Economy, Marxism.2 comments
Over the last decade that I’ve been an activist, I’ve often heard repeated variations on the adage, “Things have to get worse before they get better.” The worse things get, the more frustrated I am whenever I hear this cynical and backward projection. Here’s my explanation for why I think that it’s wrong.
The most common expressions of the logic that “it has to get worse before it gets better” that I’ve heard are related to war and the economy. In the absence of an antiwar movement, people form the opinion that nobody is motivated to challenge the U.S.’s imperialist ventures because they aren’t personally affected, and there will be no resistance until there’s a draft. In the absence of fighting labor unions that actually represent the interests of workers rather than acting as mediators on behalf of management, people get the impression that working people are still too “comfortable” in their relative prosperity compared to the rest of the world and that greater economic hardship will be necessary to push them into action. In general, it is progressive liberals who hold this notion that most people are too complacent to agitate for real change – mainly because they buy into the mainstream ideology that “we are all middle class,” even if it’s on an unconscious level and they outwardly acknowledge that the middle class is disappearing. I think radicals can sometimes be subject to these same mistaken impressions, especially in academic environments where post-colonial theorists emphasize the ways in which all Americans benefit from exploitation of poorer nations. I would never seek to minimize or dismiss the plight of the so-called “Third World,” but comparing relative miseries and calling one of them a position of privilege because it is comparatively less miserable only allows the truly privileged ruling economic class off the hook and divides those of us who are exploited by them in different ways, but who share a common interest in ending exploitation. 
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The Season To Be Jolly? December 10, 2010
Posted by alana in Anxiety, Coping Strategies, Depression, Economy.4 comments
This is not a rant about how Christmas has become a commercialized orgy of spending that directly contradicts the spirit of peace and giving that is supposed to imbue the holiday season. Whether they frame it in socioeconomic terms, or as a tension between the secular and religious, most people are at least somewhat aware of these clashing ideologies. I expect readers of this blog have an even more acute political awareness of the class dynamics involved, recognizing that pressure on the working class to “fully enjoy” one of their few significant breaks from daily drudgery means spending as much as they can afford (and more) on decorations, gifts, and feasting, thereby increasing the profits of the elite minority who flaunt their wealth, accept tax cuts, and cut thousands of jobs. It’s nothing new this year, but given the unemployment rate and austerity measures making life even more disproportionately difficult for workers in the worst economy since the Great Depression, the notion of a “season of giving” is severely strained. The immediate economic and social pressures of holiday celebration are stressful enough, but for radicals who are conscious of the broader implications, additional layers of alienation and disillusionment can weigh heavily on us.
Instead of running down statistics on how bad things really are right now, or going through a cultural and historical critique of winter holidays from their pagan roots to today, I’m going to try something a little different. I want to discuss some concrete ways of coping emotionally with these holiday pressures and contradictions. This is something a bit more personal, drawing from my experiences with therapy, but is still very much informed by my politics. I’ve been getting feedback and suggestions from readers, which I deeply appreciate and I do take to heart (even if it does take me a while to process what you’re saying and find a way to address it), and this is an attempt to respond. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if this kind of post is helpful and whether you want to see more like it sometimes; or whether you would rather have seen a more explicitly political, economic, social, or historical analysis along the lines of previous posts. You have my sincere thanks!
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It is widely acknowledged in the mainstream that the holiday season induces extreme anxiety and depression in many people, and a quick search online will bring up plenty of ‘tips’ on how to deal with holiday stress – but they have always rung rather hollow to me. Leaving aside those that want to sell you stress-reducing products and focusing on those that are more earnest, even these lists can leave you feeling pretty hopeless.
Commercials at this time of year are always reminding you how little time there is left to do your shopping, as though all you have to be concerned about spending is your TIME. Many of these coping tips have to do with time management – for example, saying ‘no’ to some of those party invitations to leave more time for yourself. If you’re unemployed or underemployed, these commercials are laughable because you have more “free” time than you’d like, but you certainly won’t be spending it on shopping with no money to spend. Even if you’re working 40-60+ hours per week, there’s no guarantee that you have money for gifts when so many people are supporting families on low-wage jobs and are burdened with medical bills that aren’t covered by insurance, the fallout from the mortgage crisis, or astronomical student loan payments. Tips on coping with financial difficulty are stated simply: “Don’t spend more than you can afford to.” Meanwhile, the vast resources of capitalist culture are bombarding you with exactly the opposite message, and if you fail to join in the gift-giving and merry-making, you’ll be seen as someone who is stingy and isolating yourself as a killjoy scrooge. (more…)
Great Recession Depression November 19, 2010
Posted by alana in Depression, Economy, Mental Illness, Racism, Suicide.5 comments
Yesterday the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released the results of a study showing that 19.9 percent of American adults — 45.1 million people — suffered from mental illness last year. 11 million of them had a diagnosable mental disorder that substantially interfered with their daily life, 8.4 million had thoughts of suicide, 2.2 million made suicide plans, and 1 million attempted suicide.
These appalling numbers clearly correlate to a miserable economy, which is no surprise given the peak number of suicides during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But if our image is one of old white fat cats jumping from their office buildings following the stock market crash of 1929, it is only because those deaths were the most publicized. A New York Magazine article last year, Are Wall Street Suicide Epidemics Real?, stated that “Bankers don’t appear to be any more prone to preexisting psychiatric problems than other groups… The rise and fall of the Dow isn’t the key factor here; the health of the overall economy is.” While it is true that most recorded suicides from The Depression era were of older white males, the picture today is very different, although still tied to the economy. With Wall Street getting bailed out by the Federal Government, it is the unemployed poor of this country who make up the overwhelming number of casualties in the current class war.
As the SAMHSA press release states:
“The survey provides other insights into the nature and scope of mental illness, including information on those segments of the population who may be at greater risk of experiencing mental illness. For example, the survey shows that mental illness is more likely among adults who were unemployed than among adults who were employed full time (27.7 percent versus 17.1 percent).
There is a marked difference in the percentages with mental illness between men and women as well, with 23.8 percent of women experiencing some form of mental illness, as opposed to 15.6 percent of men. In terms of age, young adults (ages 18 to 25) had the highest level of mental illness (30 percent), while those aged 50 and older had the lowest (13.7 percent).”
The press release doesn’t mention race, but the statistics given in the report show that among adults over 18, 15.5 percent of Asians, 16.7 percent of Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, 17.8 percent of Hispanics, 17.9 percent of African Americans, 20.7 percent of whites, 21.6 percent of American Indian or Alaska Natives, and 32.7 percent of those reporting two or more races suffered from any kind of mental illness last year. This might lead one to assume that depression is still a “white” problem, but these percentages include a variety of mental disturbances, not just depression. The numbers reported for serious thoughts of suicide show the rate as being almost the same between Hispanics, (3.3 percent), African Americans (3.5 percent), and whites (3.9 percent). (more…)
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Informed Decisions and Women’s Health November 12, 2010
Posted by alana in Depression, Education, Health Care, Mental Illness, Women.1 comment so far
A functioning democracy relies on an educated and informed public who will make reasonable decisions. Not many people would argue with this statement, but at the same time there is widespread belief that people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves so we’d really better let the experts handle things. This is true of politics and economics, which most people have been convinced they know too little about to have an opinion on (even though I would argue that the majority of people have a far better sense of what justice is, and the difference between right and wrong, than anyone in the Justice Department). One field that is generally thought to be the exclusive terrain of experts and never meant to be democratic is medicine – it goes without saying that a doctor who has had years of training will know best what is good for our bodies. Ironically, nobody can actually know what is happening with our bodies better than we can ourselves. I’m not arguing that personal self-knowledge about one’s own body and extensive medical knowledge are congruent – just that more knowledge is better, and an educated patient will be better able to convey what is wrong with them and to participate in a discussion about possible treatments. In mental health care, it almost seems like people believe the opposite principle – that psychiatry is like a magic trick, and if you know too much about the inner workings, then the magic won’t work for you. So, when it comes to our health care – and especially our mental health care – we are expected to be passive recipients of treatment rather than active participants. This is a problem because I believe that a contributing factor to most people’s depression is that they have no control over their own lives – they feel uninformed and helpless to change most things, from political and economic concerns to their jobs and family, to their own physical and mental health. Education is a process of learning that there are geniuses and experts who know what’s right, and if you just do what you’re told then you’ll be alright. Because none of us can know everything about everything, it is necessary to outsource most knowledge to professionals who concentrate on one particular specialization. But this obscures the fact that we can all know enough about most subjects to be able to make informed decisions, and that when we know about more than just one specialized field we are better able to make connections and have a holistic view of how seemingly disparate parts are actually interconnected (like the mind and the physical body, or politics and economics).
The idea of informed decision-making is especially relevant to women’s health, because culturally we are expected to simply endure particular symptoms as a matter of course because they are part of what it means to be a woman. A certain amount of misery just goes with the territory. Even doctors will tell us that a degree of pain, both physical and emotional, is normal and expected. Rather than having a scientific explanation for premenstrual or menopausal symptoms that would allow us to move away from a fatalistic view of suffering, we curse our ill fortune at having been born female. (more…)
Sanity Check November 5, 2010
Posted by alana in Activism, Environment, Marxism, Mental Illness, Sanity.1 comment so far
When the language used in politics so often resorts to insults regarding a person or group’s mental condition (crazy Right-wingers, loony Lefties, irrational Muslims, ignorant Christians, and so on), it is no wonder that an appeal to “sanity” would draw hundreds of thousands of people to the National Mall last weekend. Sanity and reason may well be something that most people can agree is desirable – but then the real question is, “What do we mean by sanity?” Is sanity something we only know negatively, by the absence of insanity? Or can we say positively what makes a person, an action, a political system, or a society sane? It’s not entirely unrelated to point out that only very recently, with Talal Asad’s groundbreaking work, has secularism been studied as a concept with its own positive traits rather than simply being assumed as the absence of religion. His anthropological exploration of the secular reveals how and why a Protestant ethic has been privileged and taken for granted as normal and neutral, when in fact it is grounded in religious ideas and practices that are specifically Christian. This helps explain why secular “tolerance” extends much more easily to Judeo-Christian faiths while Muslims are seen as a threat to the secular order. Similarly, we have generally understood sanity as the absence of whatever we might consider to be crazy – yet there are plenty of insanities that we quietly accept while others are deemed threatening and intolerable. One crude example on a personal level might be someone who is a “workaholic.” In our culture, overworking oneself isn’t considered crazy, and in many cases it is often praised. Being obsessed with one’s work and wrapping one’s entire identity in their career could easily be considered insane by another culture, but because the dominant culture gets to decide what is sane or normal or desirable, that is a problem that is not only allowed to stand but is actually encouraged. The point is, we can’t take for granted that the enduring “common-sense” ideas about what is sane and reasonable absolutely define what “sanity” is. When we assume that we all have the same picture, then our unity around working toward sanity becomes very fragile. (more…)
We Are All Monsters October 29, 2010
Posted by alana in Activism, Anger, Anxiety, Depression, Marxism, Mental Illness.2 comments
Those of us who have experienced serious mental health problems have an acute understanding of what it is like to feel monstrous. Lurking in the shadows beneath the enormous weight of a cold and fathomless ocean, numb to pain but hissing a warning that tentacles are ready to strangle anyone who might attempt to move us. Tearing at pillows and stifling screams of rage into them, pacing behind locked doors to spare the would-be victims of a red-eyed, howling fury. Sweating, shaking, and paralyzed with shame as the shrieking banshee of panic rises to the drumming heartbeat drowning out the surrounding mundane conversations of people who have begun to stare. We know instinctively that monsters are repulsive, abnormal, dangerous outcasts – and we identify with them. And we’re not the only ones. The enduring, overwhelming popularity of monsters demonstrates that millions of people see something of themselves in the monstrous. We all celebrated when Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things “roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth.” We’ve cried in empathy when Frankenstein’s monster declared, “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.” Many of us have secretly rooted for King Kong to destroy his human attackers, and we’ve made mutants from the Incredible Hulk to Spider-Man to the X-Men our heroes. Why is that?
China Miéville, a Marxist science fiction and fantasy writer, offers this explanation in a presentation (well worth listening to in its entirety) on “Marxism and Monsters” that he delivered at the British Socialist Worker’s Party Marxism Festival in 2005:
“Why would we secretly have this kind of simultaneous repulsion but also attraction to these horrendous figures, to these monsters which are the articulations of fears? Well, what I’m going to suggest is that if you think of Grendel as the sort of archetype for the outsider monster that gets back into the inside, think about the way the outsider is so threatening. Who is the outsider the most threatening to? The outsider is most threatening to the people who are telling you that what’s inside is basically alright. It is very, very functional to the status quo that it mustn’t be messed with. Now, those of us who are Marxists, who are socialists, have a whole theory of what’s wrong with the status quo, but what we know full well that for centuries, for millennia, people on the receiving end of the status quo: the oppressed, the marginalized, the alienated, have always known (whether or not they could articulate it) – that something was wrong. That this was not how they deserved to live. And what this means, therefore, is that while King Hrothgar is absolutely horrified that Grendel gets into his hoard and starts smashing shit up – if you weren’t that in love with the status quo anyway, it could be worse. You know, all of a sudden the intrusion of this monstrous thing starts throwing things around, threatening the status quo; well, in some way that you’ve never been able to articulate, you’ve never really been that in love with the status quo anyway. So I think the fact is, the fact that monsters are such sympathetic figures, is in a tremendously inchoate, mediated fashion an expression of the fact that most of us don’t really love the status quo. And this is why, you know, we are products of our society, so we are repelled by monsters, but we are also products of our society that know something’s wrong with our society, so we kind of have a sneaking admiration for them.”
The etymological root of the word “monster” is an interesting one. It comes from the Latin word monstrum, which could mean a monstrosity, but could also mean an omen, portent or sign. It derives from the verb monere, which means to warn or advise. The appearance of monsters and the monstrous is a critical warning that something is wrong; a signal of a threat which should be paid heed to rather than treated as a threat in itself. In his 1974-1975 lectures on “abnormality” at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault describes how people who were physically, mentally and behaviorally aberrant have been criminalized, punished, and disciplined in order to try to make them conform to the status quo, which is defined by its defenders as normal and sane. As Marxists, we would be more inclined to see monstrous expressions of alienation, pain or fury as symptoms of a sick status quo which itself should be changed. (more…)
Discrimination and Depression (Fox News is a Public Health Menace!) October 22, 2010
Posted by alana in Activism, Depression, Islamophobia, LGBT, Marxism, Racism.3 comments
When I was asked to speak at the National Equality March for LGBT rights in Washington, DC on October 11, 2009, I took that opportunity to speak out against Islamophobia, which may seem like an odd choice. What I said in my speech was this:
“I believe that for this movement to be strong enough to create real and lasting change, it will have to expand across borders. Not just state borders, but also the obstacles that continue to divide us both inside and outside the movement – like discrimination based on race, gender, or religious preference. Immediately after 9/11, Arabs and Muslims were instantly demonized, and Jerry Falwell said he believed the attack on the World Trade Center was a punishment from God; that the abortionists, feminists, and gays helped this to happen… Anyone who has ever been in the closet out of fear of retribution, hatred, and violence should know exactly how Arabs and Muslims feel when they are constantly suspected as terrorists.”
As a socialist, I think that identity politics divide and weaken the Left, so solidarity across all struggles for civil rights is crucial. When I worked to organize a coalition of all the LGBT activist groups in New York City to mobilize for the National Equality March, I constantly argued that we had to be principled anti-racists at the same time. The coalition ended up being overwhelmingly white, and I took the position that it was not enough to simply not be racist as individuals, but that active anti-racism had to be part of our work. There was verbal agreement, but I can’t say that it was something that was truly put into practice, for the most part. Today it still burns me up every time I hear a very dear friend of mine who is a gay Black man talk about how deeply hurtful it is for him to consistently see “no Black men” posted in otherwise appealing online dating profiles.
There is nothing more frustrating to me than arbitrary identity-based discrimination between people who should be on the same side. The advantage of Marxism is that, with a class-based understanding of society, the question of what side you are on depends on your material interests. Either you are part of the working majority who would benefit from higher wages, better social services, and social equality – or you are part of the elite capitalist minority that is only able to maintain power by keeping wages down, depriving people of social services, and keeping the majority from fighting for equality by exacerbating divisions based on race, gender, sexuality, immigration status, religious preference, and so on. (more…)
It Gets Better October 15, 2010
Posted by alana in Activism, Depression, LGBT, Suicide.7 comments
