Are We In A Mental Health Epidemic?

People say we are in a mental health epidemic. What does that mean? Mental illness is not contagious. It doesn't spread.

A lot of people are suffering these days. The incidence of depression and anxiety is on the rise. Many more people have been struggling with suicidal thoughts. How do we conceptualize this? One possible frame is a mental health epidemic. It's a very medicalized framing. It puts the onus of sickness on the individual. It's a framing that forces me to question the basis of psychiatry and psychology. 

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, incidences of ADHD, autism, and other mental health diagnoses were on the rise. But people don't exist in a vacuum. We exist in society. If so many individuals are being diagnosed with mental illness, maybe the issue isn't with those individuals. Maybe society is sick.

The problem with the fields of psychology and psychiatry is that they are culturally bound. Meaning that the framework that they use to view, analyze, and judge the people around them are creations of the culture they exist in. Thus, the mental health disciplines are good at seeing, diagnosing, and treating individuals who aren't fitting well in the culture around them, but the professions are not good at seeing, diagnosing, or treating society or culture.

Mental health, psychology, psychiatry, and wellness culture put the responsibility of mental illness and health on the individual. And provide treatments for the individual to fit in, function in, and tolerate the society and culture surrounding her. 

I want to shine a light on society itself. The burden of pathology is too much for a human to carry alone. An individual should not have to carry the yoke of wellness for a sick society. 

We exist in a dichotomy where there is a reality that we need to function in. We need to hold on to our job. We need to pay our bills. We need to pass our final exams. We may have to "go along to get along" to a certain extent. But we don't need to believe that our struggles are the result of a personal deficiency. We don't need to accept the lie of individual illness that diagnosis feeds us. We don't need to add the pressure of wellness on top of the pressure to perform in a struggling society.

We have dual agency to work on our own personal healing and growth as well as to create healthy community and affect change in society around us. We can use tools like voting, speaking up, asking questions, and listening. When we are struggling, we can think about ways to do better, while we also wonder how many other people are struggling in the same way. And we can look to the source—community, society, and culture—to find the wound and how to heal it.

I know that it is not my job or place, as a psychiatrist, to heal society. I work with individuals. My job is to help individuals. But I want us to be real. I want honesty. I don’t want to see children or adults, human beings, individually bearing the burden of societal disorder.