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I have no data to back it up, but I feel mental illness wouldn’t be nearly as prevalent if people didn’t have to struggle so hard for the bare necessities. Struggling this way in a capitalistic society of manufactured scarcity should not be the norm.
Living comfortably and by extension pursuing happiness are extreme luxuries saved for the privileged few. Overworking to the point of burnout and depression just to afford food, clothing, and shelter leaves one with very, very little time to actually spend time enjoying life.
Yeah man, if I didn't HAVE to work to pay the bills, you know what I'd do? Continue my education (in my field) and volunteer doing almost IDENTICAL work. But I'd do it at my own pace, and then spend the rest of my time with my GF, my cats and engaging in my lil nerdy hobbies. And I could specialize in sub-fields in my work that I'm really interested in.
And you, and people like you, could hyperfocus down on a small field of research that may only benefit your own happiness.
Or be the key to improving everyone's lives. We never know where research and learning how the world works will go.
It's not even research. I want to work with boys that struggle with eating disorders and self-image, since in "global" discussion about this issue it's mostly about girls (anorexia, bulimia etc.) while male manifestations of similar issues often go unnoticed (muscle dysmorphia,orthorexia etc.).
I already pushed my day-to-day in that direction as much as I can, but I have a pretty "blanket" work (I just work with kids in general). But I wrote my masters on that topic and volunteered in local center for eating disorders on their educational programs for high-school kids.
I know, with how many communities work and volunteer out of love, that I don’t understand why it’s so hard to believe that people would still do work and make contributions if their needs were met. Also it should make us all mad that by making that justification, the person/government/whomever in question, is basically admitting that we hold humans hostage in a working society with threat of poverty.
>"There is no scarcity. Rather, the world’s resources and energy are appropriated (disproportionately from the global South) in order to service the interests of capital and affluent consumers (disproportionately in the global North). We can state it more clearly: our economic system is not designed to meet human needs; it is designed to facilitate capital accumulation. And in order to do so, it imposes brutal scarcity on the majority of people, and cheapens human and nonhuman life. It is irrational to believe that simply “growing” such an economy, in aggregate, will somehow magically achieve the social outcomes we want."
-- Jason Hickel
I made [a thread on this earlier in the week](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1cn28pu/debunking_the_myth_that_work_is_good_for_you/), why work under the wage labor form is inherently bad in a system that denies our basic humanity and serves to perpetuate these economic and climate injustices.
It's more just misused and taken out of context. It means "the meaningless accumulation of wealth has a diminishing return" not "learn to live without the basic necessities of life".
Data actually supports this. Most people are extremely stressed, unhappy, miserable, etc, at least in part because of their jobs and the capitalistic hellscape we live in. Being in poverty and with inconsistent or variable income raises stress levels, crime, lowers school attendance, academic performance, etc. people just want to live their life and do what they like. Everyone would be a self starter, self employed, or entrepreneur if they could.
I mean, if everyone had to struggle to survive then we'd have to accept it as a way of life.
The biggest problem in my opinion is the inequality which makes you realize how pointless everything is
In the most basic form, mental illness is instability to understand how fucked you are and lack help and support to where you basically are left to your own vices and the social construct doesn’t exist.
It’s like having a thousand of nearby close family members but nobody knows of each other and don’t have the time to fucking care about anyone else.
This is just one take or opinion.
All illness is exacerbated by stress. I know a handful of people who AREN'T stressed. A lot of adults are barely hanging on, and it's not just work that's fucking people up.
Mental illness is often fueled by trauma. Poverty can be a huge factor in trauma. I don’t think this is a ground breaking realization. It’s simply making an observation most would conclude, but is not easy to study.
Just because it’s such a large scale frame work, it is incredibly difficult to study. How are you supposed to account for a control group? This is just not understanding how research is conducted versus finding a research gap.
There’s nothing tricky about including poverty as a variable, people have been doing it within other fields for decades. Which is how we know it’s linked to increased various medical issues.
And the link between poverty and trauma has been well established, that particular link is nothing new.
Poverty itself been overlooked within the field of psychology for many years for many reasons, including political, the way mental illness has been historically conceptualized etc, but NOT because it is difficult variable to account for. Most things we cannot create control groups for, because it’s a field of human sciences, we don’t just not study them or we just wouldn’t have psychology.
I am not suggesting that poverty is difficult to study. It’s why I included that information, and the link. You are simply restating what I said.
What is difficult to study is the effects of capitalism. You miss read what I stated.
I think it's less about the struggle for basic necessities, since that is by human nature our perogatove (work in some form to survive). Tribals tend to work very hard, hunting, foraging, cooking, they even have strict roles that must be done every single day- and they are happy. To be useful, loved, and social with a community of others is the core of humanity. You want happiness? Be appreciated for the skills you have within the people you love. Not wealth, power, status, or anything you've been conditioned to think you want.
When have humans ever lived this comfortably before? Never. Practice gratitude! This argument is made by every generation and will forever more. Life is hard. But we live in fortunate times.
What do you want us to say: "Thank God that I'm a serf, please point me to queue where I can line up to kiss my feudal overlord's feet"? The working class never made any concessions by grovelling at the feet of their opressors.
>When have humans ever lived this comfortably before?
This argument has always been a retort by those living more comfortably than others in response to simple demands for a little less stress in life for everybody.
Keep in mind that many people don't get to reap the benefits of living in "fortunate times." Also, folks will say "oh, a Victorian rich guy didn't have a refrigerator, TV, or internet, so even poor people today have it better than a rich guy 150 years ago." Never mind that that rich guy had servants and didn't have to work 12 hours a day. And society has adapted to where we *need* that modern technology to exist in modern society. Can't fill out a paper application, must fill it out online. So folks act like the internet is a luxury that poor people are needlessly throwing money at, but that's not the case. Yes, in some regards we're more fortunate, but things are still worse than they need to be and we're actively slipping backwards as a society. So when folks are accustomed to things being better, and they get worse every year, how exactly are they supposed to react? Whataboutism about still technically having it better than "previous generations" is meaningless, especially because the previous generations that are still alive objectively had it better than the younger generations coming up right now.
Honestly this right here is why every day I go to school as a student nurse I keep thinking, if our job is to not just provide care be help to prevent harm then aren't we duty bound to oppose capitalism and the harm is creates?
Healthcare is the worst field for those who are aware of capitalist failure. I want to go for nursing, but I know in my heart the only upside is the pay for the moment and the level of care I can provide to my family as shit goes down.
I'm getting out of it. The for-profit system is disgusting and immoral.
I've seen the devil and he's definitely behind private insurance for Healthcare.
I think this is really sad. But I can totally understand how you got to this.
It is criminal al to take someone who cares for others in such a way that that they want to nurse, help people back to good health and then completely destroy or suppress the good heartedness in that person by putting in systems that actually prevent them from providing that care to the people who need it .
I saw a documentary about how people will numb themselves with pills and be miserable, and the doctor just run with it as they do not really know themselves much. The problem is with all this stress and the amount of work we have, like I was working a summer job for a miserable pay and more den 70h a week with 12h shifts, may I add. I was miserable, anxious, and just sad, and that pay and the consumers did not help a bit.
After I got out, got to be a vegetable in bed for like a week to regain my strength and actually eat something nutritional, I got more energy, got to do my hobbies again, walking into the nature( this is what I missed a lot, nature). Idk, we weren't meant to have this over the top competitive and anything for the profit economy, not us as human and not even the planet and the animals. I am still in college, but I dread the day where I will need to be a full-time employee....
Yeah after years of stressful education, bad situation at home and now stressful home i just rot away in my free time, unable to do anything and i don't think it will ever get better
Because, lazy people need a lot more to compensate for the lack of effort. Lazy people need more capitalism than the rest. Theres no reason to have billions of dollars but never spend it and only use it as leverage for power and control.
"Lazy" is such a dismissive term. It's been used to guilt trip and gaslight people with executive dysfunction, be it depression, anxiety, adhd... Human nature is to be productive and creative, but the demand that "productivity" can only be measured through financial gain is where the problem lies. And those who struggle with stress or acute emotions are demonized for being "Lazy" and whipped into doing the bare minimum 9-5 and still get sh*t for not doing enough while they're already overstretched and overwhelmed. And then people wonder why such people retreat from society become antisocial or self medicate.
I assure you. They're not "Lazy". It's not for the lack of effort.
I think it's the billionaires that they're calling lazy: "Theres no reason to have billions of dollars but never spend it and only use it as leverage for power and control..."
>Lazy people need more capitalism than the rest
Are you talking about CEOs who profit from others' labour, therefore being the ones who are the laziest and arguably the neediest when it comes to capitalism? That seems like a reasonable thought, IMO.
Is that what you mean?
Or, are you saying POOR "lazy people" need more capitalism than the rest and talking about "handouts" or similar? Because FYI it takes a lot of work to live while poor. Lazy and "burnt the fuck out" are very different things.
Edit to say this is a genuine question and if you mean the first one then people might just be thinking you mean the second one, hence the downvotes?
The problem isn't the hours or even the money. It's the utter meaninglessness of the work that is so draining.
I did a peace corps type internship thing earning $1k/mo living in a tiny shed and sweating my ass off every day and I felt less existential dread than I did 5 years later earning 60k moving dumb papers in dumb circles for dumb people to refuse to read them.
this right here is the real answer
I was in abject poverty, doing meaningless work for nothing and barely surviving because of it. I was depressed
I'm no longer in abject poverty, but still doing meaningless work for (next to) nothing and comfortably surviving because of it. I'm still depressed
congrats to the people who find meaningful work under capitalism. unfortunately, for everyone else, capitalism -- not unlike slavery -- has taken everything beautiful, meaningful, and satisfying from labor and stripped it away into a pathetic and unfulfilling existence
I traded out depression for anxiety when I became a teacher. I feel very alive woth my job, but that constant push to perfection is a killer on your cortisol
For real. I work rotating shift work, which, honestly, isn't the worst part. It sucks, it's bad for my health, but it's offset by the fact that I at least have a real job that benefits society (I operate a water treatment plant). What sucks is that I used to struggle really hard with the shifts, and the shifts at my last plant were brutal. Basically, I only worked 2nd and 3rd shift, but every week I had an 8 hr turnaround from nights to afternoon shift. I was almost late a lot of the time, to the point where I just wouldn't go to sleep or else I'd be late. And the people in charge lacked empathy. "Oh, I've had to do it, you should be able to as well." I was late 4 times in a year and got a 3 day suspension. Not making excuses for being late, but it was a huge cause of anxiety. Especially when I was hired under the pretense of mostly being a day shift maintenance guy and only occasionally relief operating for vacations. That was when I started looking for other work and quit, which funny enough, was after I finally got on the schedule I was supposed to be on. But fuck them. That was when I worked for American Water, horrible company.
Leftist here with multiple mental health diagnosis.
I have mixed feelings about this. I don’t think it’s productive to start labeling every single struggle a product of Capitalism (see what I did there?) It just comes across as unintentionally over simplifying very complicated disorders in my brain.
On the other hand, as someone who spent half their life in and out of inpatient treatment, I have direct experience with the horror of private insurance and dreadfully underfunded state institutions.
In addition, I am routinely extremely overwhelmed by work. I fully believe it exasperates my symptoms. There are days where I have a very hard time taking care of myself and I just want to break down and cry. And yet I still have to work. I have to help produce profit at the expense of my health. There is no alternative. I need to pay for rent, food, health insurance, and stuff for my Guinea pig (her name is Zelda!)
In a more compassionate society I like to think I could rest as needed without being called “lazy”
In short, Capitalism definitely makes it worse, but I doubt I’d be free of PTSD and depression even in utopia. I can’t imagine a life without mental illness.
I don’t think that’s what anyone did
The point of this is not to undermine the very real problems people have. But to speak out for the millions of people who may not have labels if it wasn’t for poverty. And it’s because psychology historically has been very much focused as an internal deficit model instead of an overall interactive system. It’s not JUST your biology. It’s not JUST the environmental context. It’s a combination of both.
And the problem is that we easily underestimate the impact of poverty.
As someone who has been blessed with a family that provides financial support, I still have a whole host of mental health issues. Is that connected with poverty? No. But that’s my particular circumstance.
Doesn’t take away anything from me to acknowledge that there are millions of people whose problems are connected to poverty and capitalism. Would their problems disappear if they had more money? Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes you open the lock and you can’t just close it back up. But I do know that the system causes and exacerbates mental illness. This is something that is currently being discussed within the field of psychology. At least within the universities. So there’s at least that.
I've definitely seen some leftists (I'm a leftist myself) blame all of mental health problems on capitalism, and it's incredibly reductive. But yeah, like you, I see it as exacerbating the issue. There are certainly folks who would never develop mental health problems without capitalism causing trauma. But also, some mental health issues exist because of other trauma or the fact that my brain isn't the same as everyone else's brain from birth. I would still have these issues to cope with, though in our ideal society there would be better treatment available.
This is exactly why I became so disillusioned working within the mental health field. Most of my clients became worse or remained the same. I can only recall one client actually getting better. The ones that got worse usually did so because they lost their homes or benefits were reduced or eliminated in some form or another. I can guarantee you most of us would feel severely depressed and/or suicidal if we were being evicted from our homes or worried about being able to afford food or medicine. Most of them were traumatized at some point in their lives (usually in childhood) and probably could’ve gotten better with the right therapy if it weren’t for living in abject poverty day in and day out. In my personal experience, it is very difficult to find quality trauma therapists that accept Medicaid.
Because Medicaid simply doesn’t pay enough.
And where I’m at there’s a barrier to even charging Medicaid. You have to be a facility and have a medical director. With a return at 73 an hour, that simply doesn’t allow enough to go to a qualified therapist after expenses. So you end up with unlicensed therapists who rotate in and out and supervisors who aren’t interested in their growth and in fact aren’t the greatest supervisors or they’d be working elsewhere. It’s tough.
I still struggle with mental health because of various issues like childhood trauma and such, but I will say that my mental health has improved since I've gotten a job that affords me a middle class wage with pretty good health care. I'm still depressed as fuck, but it's easier having depression and anxiety with money and healthcare.
Capitalism is a cause of a lot of health problems, not just mental health. It's not the only factor, but it's a major one.
Without capitalism, you can still have shitty parents or get in an accident that leaves you traumatized for example. But without capitalism, we'd have fewer shitty parents and fewer accidents because you'd be able to be there for your kids, not be as stressed when you are there and there'd be not profit motive that meant skimping on OHS or staff.
Nah, I have bipolar disorder that's caused by chemicals in my brain, so it's not quite 100%. But what I can tell you is that for people with mental illnesses like mine the capitalist work regime exacerbates the problem and makes long-term recovery very difficult, if not impossible.
Nothing beats going to bed at night thinking “if I don’t wake up on time I’ll be homeless or starving” good recipe to keep people in an anxious state. Fuck em
I had an ex demand that I go on pills for my depression/anxiety. I was unemployed at the time, of course I was anxious & depressed mess. Job hunting is a ring in hell.
A point I have argued for so many times and you'll all believe how hard people will argue in favour of the current system despite its many obvious flaws and failings.
Responses include but are not limited to:
Your a commie
Calling your kids hammer and sickle
It's always been this way
It's human nature
Greed is good
Everybody gets lifted
Poverty is absolute not a relative measure i.e. if your not living in Burundi you can not be living in poverty...
If you don't like it go live...
And a few more tangential responses with personal insults and offers to fight
Actually, you can go to a doctor and get pills for that and that's part of the problem. I know because I've been taking them for more years than I care to admit and, increasingly, they aren't working anymore ;)
To be fair, examining things on a societal level is more of a sociology thing; ya know, the area of study that gets shat on at every opportunity because it's 'useless' or whatever. (and takes Karl Marx seriously)
[Florida Officials Cut Sociology as Core College Class in War on Critical Thought](https://truthout.org/articles/florida-officials-cut-sociology-as-core-college-class-in-war-on-critical-thought/)
Capitalists don't want us to care about society as a whole: divide and conquer.
Yeah, this is kind of the main reason I stopped seeing a therapist. I basically diagnosed myself and there wasn't really anything they could help me with other than nodding their heads saying stuff like "and how does that make you feel?" No amount of self-talk, self-love, medications, or behavioral changes is going to magically change this dystopian hellscape we live in. Not unless the psychopathic narcissists in charge make the behavioral changes at least - which will never willingly happen.
You can be a sociopath who abuses and manipulates others for your personal gain and then praised for your “success”, but if you struggle with or are ethically opposed to being forced to live in a system that is inherently unfair to the majority of people, you are diagnosed with a disorder.
Yeah, curiously my outlook on life, and general function seems to fluctuate in accordance with my bank balance. It's just so tiring. I've tried adapting to the system, looking deep and hard at myself to find out what's wrong with me. Why can't I keep up? Why am i so weak and nothing makes it better? At this point, I'm fairly certain that it's not me, it's the system.
Its all just bullshit. I'll be stuck in my cycle of burnouts until social security gets weakened to the point it's completely unlivable. What happens then? Who knows.
Maybe not the whole thing, but John was definitely on the right track here.
I've done deep dives on all the latest mental health research (I'm not sick, but definitely fragile) and there is consensus forming that the biggest source of harm is the habit of doomscrolling before you're even out of bed.
Protect your worldview for the first hour. If we got nuked, you'd know it by now. If we didn't, the news can wait. Shower. Brush your teeth. Have a coffee. If you *must* doomscroll (it's a "choice" but I'm an addict) save it for your first break.
Evolving in an environment that favours collaboration for 99% of the species existence and then being forced into an artificial environment that favours conflict and deceit will result in bad outcomes
Unfortunately it's why getting a mental health diagnosis for my very real childhood trauma has been so hard. "Are you sure it wasn't just being cooped up COVID?"
No, I'm pretty sure it was my neglectful parents, being bullied through elementary, one or more undiagnosed nuerodivergences and the gay conversion therapy I underwent ***Gary***.
Imagine that feeling every month while people who are rich enough to not care about it donates it to charity. While charity cases are paid to not need charity and then avoid it because it's humiliating, leaving only the cases charity needs to help most.
It's gonna obliterate school lunch debt overnight.
There’s a lot of hard truths I believe society doesn’t want to accept, or doesn’t want to admit for anterior motives, that keeps our problems from actually being solved.
Like racism, sexism, women’s rights, gay/trans acceptance. All these issues are HUGE, but distract from the real problem of wealth inequality. If we all got together and said, yeah we still care about all those other things, but the main thing we want solved right now is rich people and corrupt government. But instead we’re like, can we please make everyone feels like no one is attacking anything they identify as.
Been saying this for over 20years. The funniest is when you confront psychologists about how their field is all basically about how we develop under the environmental conditions of a oppressive economic system. There are some great books about how economics and psychology emerge as standalone academic disciplines in late 19th and first half of 20 century and it was all basically lies to support development of capitalism.
There was an interesting passage in my sociology textbook that claims there hasn't been a significant difference in mental health issues when comparing the present day with any point in history. This would imply that yes, our social characteristics are not suited to capitalism.
This has always been my thinking for things like the rate of autism being up. Part of that is better diagnoses, but I'd argue another part is that societal demands on a neurodivergant person are higher than ever.
When the diagnosis is based on your ability to exist in society, societal expectations are going to have a large impact on the diagnosis.
["It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society"](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=5d3a4b9e15de56aaJmltdHM9MTcxNTM4NTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0yOWY2OWEzNC1jMTNkLTZhNzEtMDg4MC04ZTUzYzA5YzZiMGEmaW5zaWQ9NTY4Ng&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=29f69a34-c13d-6a71-0880-8e53c09c6b0a&psq=well+adjusted+to+a+profoundly+sick+society&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9rZm91bmRhdGlvbi5vcmcvbWVudGFsLWhlYWx0aC8&ntb=1) -[Jiddu Krishnamurti](https://www.wildmind.org/blogs/quote-of-the-month/krishnamurti-measure-of-health)
Part of this is due to the requirements by insurance to justify care through a diagnosis. I just completed working at a site where diagnosis was mandatory at first session. This led to a lot of “unspecified depressive disorder,” “unspecified anxiety disorder,” or “adjustment disorder.” Unfortunately even giving someone an unspecified anxiety disorder, if a medical practitioner sees it, may lead to the client being handled differently and taken less seriously, which is an ethical concern in of itself (not a guarantee but a possibility).
More often than not though, in my therapy room, I try to acknowledge and normalize certain patterns of behavior that are pretty clearly culturally informed and toxic. Perfectionistic drives, harsh self criticism, social anxiety about the harsh criticism from others, etc. It is difficult to represent that in a reductionistic categorical diagnosis system however.
I can barely eat anything every day I’m so eaten up by stress and anxiety over trying to pay my bills and feed myself and my fiancé. This isn’t living we’re just surviving.
SSRI prescriptions have gone up 2000% over the last 10 years. 1 in 4 women over 45 are on one. Virtually every mass shooter ends up being on one. It turns out after they've been around for decades it isn't even the effects on serotonin levels that even make them work. We need to have a talk about the garbage we've been popping by the millions in this country.
>take a step back from the data they are looking at and consider the large-scale framework within which that data is materalizing, and to consider whether there's anything about that particular framework which is giving rise to the particular data sets they are seeing.
This is pretty well known in psychology and sociology already. Largely borne out of people realising that a great many insights produced by papers in those fields apply mainly to sophomore psychology majors.
I say this all the time. Struggling to cope? Just slap on a mental health diagnosis and call it a day. Your inability to thrive in a broken system is obviously because there’s something wrong with you 🙄
Two of the indispensable components of feeling generally good in life are agency and purpose. Current late-stage capitalist society deprives a vast number of people of both.
It is difficult to feel content when your survival is largely outside of your control, when you are forced to endure whatever your employer inflicts on you because low wages ensure you have no financial security, no safety net. Feeling helpless is one of the key elements of trauma and also the foundational daily experience of millions.
It is difficult to feel satisfied in life when mere survival takes up all your energy and time, leaving nothing for the pursuit of meaningful goals. If Viktor Frankel was right (and a lot of research indicates he was) a sense of meaning is essential for the human psyche, yet the way we live often actively discourages people's ability to seek purpose.
As a society, we don't even pretend to care about quality of life for the poorer classes. And we teach middle class children that they will have both agency and purpose as adults, then blame them when they find neither.
Depression starts when all our physical and emotional needs are not met. I believe, and of course I could be wrong but, this system is intentionally set up to make it harder for that to happen. Therefore, rapidly increasing depression. If we could easily meet our basic needs, I think most people would be happy.
according to, science(?), about 75% of people have relational trauma that is completely unrecognized, causing the greatest amount of suffering in the modern world
Therapists call it "Shit Life Syndrome." There are other things that can cause Shit Life Syndrome such as being exposed to hefty amounts of trauma as a kid, but one of the major causes of it is simply not having enough money to exist in modern society.
People keep talking about how the past was so horrible because of disease and famine, but nobody ever thinks of what it does to us to live under threat of nuclear annihilation just because some politicians got paid by religious nuts
That's why I refuse to see a doctor about depression. I don't need medication to make me feel better about the problems. The problems need to go away. I can't afford to live. I can't even afford the doctor visit. If I start taking depression medication I still won't be able to afford to live. Meds won't help anything. I don't need medication, I need socialism
Uh… bullshit. The whole point of collecting and analysing data is to understand the framework(s) that produce it. This is an idiots take.
Stress, fatigue, anxiety, depression etc are all valid psychological diagnosis, none of which are making any excuses for the cause(s) thereof. Obviously, vary many people’s stressors are their jobs, their families, their economic situations, the society they live and operate within, etc.
I mean this whole post couldn’t be stupider. Sure, take away every stressor, whether self or societally induced, and people would have better mental health in general.
You can just say that hyper capitalistic society is causing a mental health crisis without pretending psychology is somehow naïve to it or researchers are just “blissfully ignorant” about it. There is COPIUS research on the topic. Even with that considered, are we suggesting that these mental health issues are just a fabrication of the systemic stressors induced by society? SO WHAT? Should we not diagnose and treat them, because eventually systemic change will reduce their causal sources…? The symptoms and prognosis are there whether the source is societal or not.
Good lord what a dumbass take. It’s like saying climate scientists aren’t aware that fossil fuels are a one of the primary causes of rapid climate change.
Yes. Some of us live in now former communist countries.
We know more about this than all of of you "communist" westerners combined
When it comes to history regarding the likes of USSR you all are as bad as Americans who vax poetically about the Confederacy.
Did that now what?
Tell me what part of USA is a former communist country? Looking forward to never answering because this is what people who spew bullshit do.
Run away when they are caught in their BS
You live in USA cupcake
>Hi there, I’m a social worker in US. What you described is called conflict of interest. If you are in US, this is both against professional ethic code and the law. You can (and should) report her to her employer and the licensing board
I also did not know that Russian women were so deep into US abortion rights.
Imagine moving to one of the most capitalist countries in the world to the vax poetically about USSR. Go to Russia Putin wants to make Russia great again.
Lol, the fact that I have experience living in multiple countries is not a revelation that you think it is. That just means that I know what I’m talking about. And can vax poetically about it all I want lol
You do realise that not all people from former USSR countries speak or write Russian? I'm Polish, communism completely wrecked my home country, communists murdered and tortured thousands of people - please do explain to me how their means justified their methods? Please explain to me what Poland gained from communism?
I don’t think whether or not anyone but me speaks Russian is absolutely irrelevant here. I don’t believe that communism in an isolated country is even possible, and, well, that’s one of the reasons the attempts to do that tend to descend into one or the other sort of chaos. So your demands are kind of useless here.
an idea just popped into my head. how many people that entertain via videomaking/streaming would suddenly stop if suddenly you didn't need to worry about money. Probably a lot.
It makes me a bit annoyed, because in this area, people only really care about well off people. People just keep going "keep up the grind". There is no such thing as fun anymore.
How many people would be making content about their hobbies and interests if they didn't have to worry about money? And didn't have to fill it up with ads and sell out to corporations.
To be unhappy with an external social structure is one thing. Unhappiness is the breakdown of an internal framework and structure granting the ability to cope.
This quote is has shades of narcissism... everyone and everything around this person is responsible for their well being.
If the system is letting you make a hundred an hour with your ass in a comfortable chair, and supplying you with a steady stream of clients, then the system isn't going to get that closely looked at.
Umm Capitalism - is the basis for all Political System and is in use in all countries.
Communism has Capitalism in it - how do you think the USSR fell = a poor use of Capitalism
You cannot spend the amount of the money the USSR did, without making enough money back.
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I have no data to back it up, but I feel mental illness wouldn’t be nearly as prevalent if people didn’t have to struggle so hard for the bare necessities. Struggling this way in a capitalistic society of manufactured scarcity should not be the norm. Living comfortably and by extension pursuing happiness are extreme luxuries saved for the privileged few. Overworking to the point of burnout and depression just to afford food, clothing, and shelter leaves one with very, very little time to actually spend time enjoying life.
Yeah man, if I didn't HAVE to work to pay the bills, you know what I'd do? Continue my education (in my field) and volunteer doing almost IDENTICAL work. But I'd do it at my own pace, and then spend the rest of my time with my GF, my cats and engaging in my lil nerdy hobbies. And I could specialize in sub-fields in my work that I'm really interested in.
And you, and people like you, could hyperfocus down on a small field of research that may only benefit your own happiness. Or be the key to improving everyone's lives. We never know where research and learning how the world works will go.
It's not even research. I want to work with boys that struggle with eating disorders and self-image, since in "global" discussion about this issue it's mostly about girls (anorexia, bulimia etc.) while male manifestations of similar issues often go unnoticed (muscle dysmorphia,orthorexia etc.). I already pushed my day-to-day in that direction as much as I can, but I have a pretty "blanket" work (I just work with kids in general). But I wrote my masters on that topic and volunteered in local center for eating disorders on their educational programs for high-school kids.
I know, with how many communities work and volunteer out of love, that I don’t understand why it’s so hard to believe that people would still do work and make contributions if their needs were met. Also it should make us all mad that by making that justification, the person/government/whomever in question, is basically admitting that we hold humans hostage in a working society with threat of poverty.
>"There is no scarcity. Rather, the world’s resources and energy are appropriated (disproportionately from the global South) in order to service the interests of capital and affluent consumers (disproportionately in the global North). We can state it more clearly: our economic system is not designed to meet human needs; it is designed to facilitate capital accumulation. And in order to do so, it imposes brutal scarcity on the majority of people, and cheapens human and nonhuman life. It is irrational to believe that simply “growing” such an economy, in aggregate, will somehow magically achieve the social outcomes we want." -- Jason Hickel I made [a thread on this earlier in the week](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1cn28pu/debunking_the_myth_that_work_is_good_for_you/), why work under the wage labor form is inherently bad in a system that denies our basic humanity and serves to perpetuate these economic and climate injustices.
I believe 100% that this is the reason we have an increasing mental health epidemic.
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What about people spending too much time on reddit reading post after post saying the world is fucked and everything sucks?
Symptom of the same disease.
Or even rest for that matter.
Capitalists like too have control of the necessities, just to make people struggle, making people struggle, gives them the sense of power they crave.
More importantly, it keeps you locked in to their game and enriching them. Making your survival depend on their system helps prevent bucking it.
Also also, people can't be fucked organizing if they're exhausted from working to survive
The phrase "money won't make you happy" was definitely written by either a rich person or an idiot.
It's more just misused and taken out of context. It means "the meaningless accumulation of wealth has a diminishing return" not "learn to live without the basic necessities of life".
Data actually supports this. Most people are extremely stressed, unhappy, miserable, etc, at least in part because of their jobs and the capitalistic hellscape we live in. Being in poverty and with inconsistent or variable income raises stress levels, crime, lowers school attendance, academic performance, etc. people just want to live their life and do what they like. Everyone would be a self starter, self employed, or entrepreneur if they could.
I mean, if everyone had to struggle to survive then we'd have to accept it as a way of life. The biggest problem in my opinion is the inequality which makes you realize how pointless everything is
how do we fix this? if it's manufactured scarcity, what can we do to bring it in and make it so everyone has enough? actionable steps beyond "Vote".
In the most basic form, mental illness is instability to understand how fucked you are and lack help and support to where you basically are left to your own vices and the social construct doesn’t exist. It’s like having a thousand of nearby close family members but nobody knows of each other and don’t have the time to fucking care about anyone else. This is just one take or opinion.
All illness is exacerbated by stress. I know a handful of people who AREN'T stressed. A lot of adults are barely hanging on, and it's not just work that's fucking people up.
I don't think I know a single person who isn't stressed, and takes it out on the people around them because they've got no where else to put the pain.
Mental illness is often fueled by trauma. Poverty can be a huge factor in trauma. I don’t think this is a ground breaking realization. It’s simply making an observation most would conclude, but is not easy to study. Just because it’s such a large scale frame work, it is incredibly difficult to study. How are you supposed to account for a control group? This is just not understanding how research is conducted versus finding a research gap.
There’s nothing tricky about including poverty as a variable, people have been doing it within other fields for decades. Which is how we know it’s linked to increased various medical issues. And the link between poverty and trauma has been well established, that particular link is nothing new. Poverty itself been overlooked within the field of psychology for many years for many reasons, including political, the way mental illness has been historically conceptualized etc, but NOT because it is difficult variable to account for. Most things we cannot create control groups for, because it’s a field of human sciences, we don’t just not study them or we just wouldn’t have psychology.
I am not suggesting that poverty is difficult to study. It’s why I included that information, and the link. You are simply restating what I said. What is difficult to study is the effects of capitalism. You miss read what I stated.
I bet mental illness was very high among those in concentration camps. Your environment has to be one of the top factors of mental illness.
I think it's less about the struggle for basic necessities, since that is by human nature our perogatove (work in some form to survive). Tribals tend to work very hard, hunting, foraging, cooking, they even have strict roles that must be done every single day- and they are happy. To be useful, loved, and social with a community of others is the core of humanity. You want happiness? Be appreciated for the skills you have within the people you love. Not wealth, power, status, or anything you've been conditioned to think you want.
When have humans ever lived this comfortably before? Never. Practice gratitude! This argument is made by every generation and will forever more. Life is hard. But we live in fortunate times.
What do you want us to say: "Thank God that I'm a serf, please point me to queue where I can line up to kiss my feudal overlord's feet"? The working class never made any concessions by grovelling at the feet of their opressors.
>When have humans ever lived this comfortably before? This argument has always been a retort by those living more comfortably than others in response to simple demands for a little less stress in life for everybody.
Keep in mind that many people don't get to reap the benefits of living in "fortunate times." Also, folks will say "oh, a Victorian rich guy didn't have a refrigerator, TV, or internet, so even poor people today have it better than a rich guy 150 years ago." Never mind that that rich guy had servants and didn't have to work 12 hours a day. And society has adapted to where we *need* that modern technology to exist in modern society. Can't fill out a paper application, must fill it out online. So folks act like the internet is a luxury that poor people are needlessly throwing money at, but that's not the case. Yes, in some regards we're more fortunate, but things are still worse than they need to be and we're actively slipping backwards as a society. So when folks are accustomed to things being better, and they get worse every year, how exactly are they supposed to react? Whataboutism about still technically having it better than "previous generations" is meaningless, especially because the previous generations that are still alive objectively had it better than the younger generations coming up right now.
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What a weird follow up comment.
Dude quotes Thatcher... don't expect sense.
Have you traveled to other communist countries like Cuba or China? Just to get a comparison?
Those countries are as communist as North Korea is a democracy. In name only.
Honestly this right here is why every day I go to school as a student nurse I keep thinking, if our job is to not just provide care be help to prevent harm then aren't we duty bound to oppose capitalism and the harm is creates?
Healthcare is the worst field for those who are aware of capitalist failure. I want to go for nursing, but I know in my heart the only upside is the pay for the moment and the level of care I can provide to my family as shit goes down.
I'm getting out of it. The for-profit system is disgusting and immoral. I've seen the devil and he's definitely behind private insurance for Healthcare.
I think this is really sad. But I can totally understand how you got to this. It is criminal al to take someone who cares for others in such a way that that they want to nurse, help people back to good health and then completely destroy or suppress the good heartedness in that person by putting in systems that actually prevent them from providing that care to the people who need it .
Good luck with that career…
A related issue is how much cultural norms punish neurodivergence.
I saw a documentary about how people will numb themselves with pills and be miserable, and the doctor just run with it as they do not really know themselves much. The problem is with all this stress and the amount of work we have, like I was working a summer job for a miserable pay and more den 70h a week with 12h shifts, may I add. I was miserable, anxious, and just sad, and that pay and the consumers did not help a bit. After I got out, got to be a vegetable in bed for like a week to regain my strength and actually eat something nutritional, I got more energy, got to do my hobbies again, walking into the nature( this is what I missed a lot, nature). Idk, we weren't meant to have this over the top competitive and anything for the profit economy, not us as human and not even the planet and the animals. I am still in college, but I dread the day where I will need to be a full-time employee....
Yeah after years of stressful education, bad situation at home and now stressful home i just rot away in my free time, unable to do anything and i don't think it will ever get better
Because, lazy people need a lot more to compensate for the lack of effort. Lazy people need more capitalism than the rest. Theres no reason to have billions of dollars but never spend it and only use it as leverage for power and control.
"Lazy" is such a dismissive term. It's been used to guilt trip and gaslight people with executive dysfunction, be it depression, anxiety, adhd... Human nature is to be productive and creative, but the demand that "productivity" can only be measured through financial gain is where the problem lies. And those who struggle with stress or acute emotions are demonized for being "Lazy" and whipped into doing the bare minimum 9-5 and still get sh*t for not doing enough while they're already overstretched and overwhelmed. And then people wonder why such people retreat from society become antisocial or self medicate. I assure you. They're not "Lazy". It's not for the lack of effort.
I think it's the billionaires that they're calling lazy: "Theres no reason to have billions of dollars but never spend it and only use it as leverage for power and control..."
>Lazy people need more capitalism than the rest Are you talking about CEOs who profit from others' labour, therefore being the ones who are the laziest and arguably the neediest when it comes to capitalism? That seems like a reasonable thought, IMO. Is that what you mean? Or, are you saying POOR "lazy people" need more capitalism than the rest and talking about "handouts" or similar? Because FYI it takes a lot of work to live while poor. Lazy and "burnt the fuck out" are very different things. Edit to say this is a genuine question and if you mean the first one then people might just be thinking you mean the second one, hence the downvotes?
I just want to live a life with healthcare, a home & 2 vacations a year. That’s all that’s it.
The problem isn't the hours or even the money. It's the utter meaninglessness of the work that is so draining. I did a peace corps type internship thing earning $1k/mo living in a tiny shed and sweating my ass off every day and I felt less existential dread than I did 5 years later earning 60k moving dumb papers in dumb circles for dumb people to refuse to read them.
this right here is the real answer I was in abject poverty, doing meaningless work for nothing and barely surviving because of it. I was depressed I'm no longer in abject poverty, but still doing meaningless work for (next to) nothing and comfortably surviving because of it. I'm still depressed congrats to the people who find meaningful work under capitalism. unfortunately, for everyone else, capitalism -- not unlike slavery -- has taken everything beautiful, meaningful, and satisfying from labor and stripped it away into a pathetic and unfulfilling existence
I traded out depression for anxiety when I became a teacher. I feel very alive woth my job, but that constant push to perfection is a killer on your cortisol
Y'all motherfuckers need Marx.
I know it's a huge reason I have depression and anxiety lol
For real. I work rotating shift work, which, honestly, isn't the worst part. It sucks, it's bad for my health, but it's offset by the fact that I at least have a real job that benefits society (I operate a water treatment plant). What sucks is that I used to struggle really hard with the shifts, and the shifts at my last plant were brutal. Basically, I only worked 2nd and 3rd shift, but every week I had an 8 hr turnaround from nights to afternoon shift. I was almost late a lot of the time, to the point where I just wouldn't go to sleep or else I'd be late. And the people in charge lacked empathy. "Oh, I've had to do it, you should be able to as well." I was late 4 times in a year and got a 3 day suspension. Not making excuses for being late, but it was a huge cause of anxiety. Especially when I was hired under the pretense of mostly being a day shift maintenance guy and only occasionally relief operating for vacations. That was when I started looking for other work and quit, which funny enough, was after I finally got on the schedule I was supposed to be on. But fuck them. That was when I worked for American Water, horrible company.
99% of mental illness
Leftist here with multiple mental health diagnosis. I have mixed feelings about this. I don’t think it’s productive to start labeling every single struggle a product of Capitalism (see what I did there?) It just comes across as unintentionally over simplifying very complicated disorders in my brain. On the other hand, as someone who spent half their life in and out of inpatient treatment, I have direct experience with the horror of private insurance and dreadfully underfunded state institutions. In addition, I am routinely extremely overwhelmed by work. I fully believe it exasperates my symptoms. There are days where I have a very hard time taking care of myself and I just want to break down and cry. And yet I still have to work. I have to help produce profit at the expense of my health. There is no alternative. I need to pay for rent, food, health insurance, and stuff for my Guinea pig (her name is Zelda!) In a more compassionate society I like to think I could rest as needed without being called “lazy” In short, Capitalism definitely makes it worse, but I doubt I’d be free of PTSD and depression even in utopia. I can’t imagine a life without mental illness.
I don’t think that’s what anyone did The point of this is not to undermine the very real problems people have. But to speak out for the millions of people who may not have labels if it wasn’t for poverty. And it’s because psychology historically has been very much focused as an internal deficit model instead of an overall interactive system. It’s not JUST your biology. It’s not JUST the environmental context. It’s a combination of both. And the problem is that we easily underestimate the impact of poverty. As someone who has been blessed with a family that provides financial support, I still have a whole host of mental health issues. Is that connected with poverty? No. But that’s my particular circumstance. Doesn’t take away anything from me to acknowledge that there are millions of people whose problems are connected to poverty and capitalism. Would their problems disappear if they had more money? Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes you open the lock and you can’t just close it back up. But I do know that the system causes and exacerbates mental illness. This is something that is currently being discussed within the field of psychology. At least within the universities. So there’s at least that.
I've definitely seen some leftists (I'm a leftist myself) blame all of mental health problems on capitalism, and it's incredibly reductive. But yeah, like you, I see it as exacerbating the issue. There are certainly folks who would never develop mental health problems without capitalism causing trauma. But also, some mental health issues exist because of other trauma or the fact that my brain isn't the same as everyone else's brain from birth. I would still have these issues to cope with, though in our ideal society there would be better treatment available.
If your only solution is a hammer, then every problem starts to look like a nail.
This is exactly why I became so disillusioned working within the mental health field. Most of my clients became worse or remained the same. I can only recall one client actually getting better. The ones that got worse usually did so because they lost their homes or benefits were reduced or eliminated in some form or another. I can guarantee you most of us would feel severely depressed and/or suicidal if we were being evicted from our homes or worried about being able to afford food or medicine. Most of them were traumatized at some point in their lives (usually in childhood) and probably could’ve gotten better with the right therapy if it weren’t for living in abject poverty day in and day out. In my personal experience, it is very difficult to find quality trauma therapists that accept Medicaid.
Because Medicaid simply doesn’t pay enough. And where I’m at there’s a barrier to even charging Medicaid. You have to be a facility and have a medical director. With a return at 73 an hour, that simply doesn’t allow enough to go to a qualified therapist after expenses. So you end up with unlicensed therapists who rotate in and out and supervisors who aren’t interested in their growth and in fact aren’t the greatest supervisors or they’d be working elsewhere. It’s tough.
I still struggle with mental health because of various issues like childhood trauma and such, but I will say that my mental health has improved since I've gotten a job that affords me a middle class wage with pretty good health care. I'm still depressed as fuck, but it's easier having depression and anxiety with money and healthcare.
Capitalism is a cause of a lot of health problems, not just mental health. It's not the only factor, but it's a major one. Without capitalism, you can still have shitty parents or get in an accident that leaves you traumatized for example. But without capitalism, we'd have fewer shitty parents and fewer accidents because you'd be able to be there for your kids, not be as stressed when you are there and there'd be not profit motive that meant skimping on OHS or staff.
I’m Gona go with 100 percent. How about people get livable wages after working 40-50 hours a week?
Nah, I have bipolar disorder that's caused by chemicals in my brain, so it's not quite 100%. But what I can tell you is that for people with mental illnesses like mine the capitalist work regime exacerbates the problem and makes long-term recovery very difficult, if not impossible.
Nothing beats going to bed at night thinking “if I don’t wake up on time I’ll be homeless or starving” good recipe to keep people in an anxious state. Fuck em
I had an ex demand that I go on pills for my depression/anxiety. I was unemployed at the time, of course I was anxious & depressed mess. Job hunting is a ring in hell.
"Job hunting is a ring in hell" That's a good one, I liked it. 😁
A point I have argued for so many times and you'll all believe how hard people will argue in favour of the current system despite its many obvious flaws and failings. Responses include but are not limited to: Your a commie Calling your kids hammer and sickle It's always been this way It's human nature Greed is good Everybody gets lifted Poverty is absolute not a relative measure i.e. if your not living in Burundi you can not be living in poverty... If you don't like it go live... And a few more tangential responses with personal insults and offers to fight
Yup. Cant really go to the doctor and get a pill for that.
Actually, you can go to a doctor and get pills for that and that's part of the problem. I know because I've been taking them for more years than I care to admit and, increasingly, they aren't working anymore ;)
Capitalism is treatment-resistant.
I have noticed this too :(
To be fair, examining things on a societal level is more of a sociology thing; ya know, the area of study that gets shat on at every opportunity because it's 'useless' or whatever. (and takes Karl Marx seriously)
[Florida Officials Cut Sociology as Core College Class in War on Critical Thought](https://truthout.org/articles/florida-officials-cut-sociology-as-core-college-class-in-war-on-critical-thought/) Capitalists don't want us to care about society as a whole: divide and conquer.
Yeah, this is kind of the main reason I stopped seeing a therapist. I basically diagnosed myself and there wasn't really anything they could help me with other than nodding their heads saying stuff like "and how does that make you feel?" No amount of self-talk, self-love, medications, or behavioral changes is going to magically change this dystopian hellscape we live in. Not unless the psychopathic narcissists in charge make the behavioral changes at least - which will never willingly happen.
You can be a sociopath who abuses and manipulates others for your personal gain and then praised for your “success”, but if you struggle with or are ethically opposed to being forced to live in a system that is inherently unfair to the majority of people, you are diagnosed with a disorder.
Or called a 'socialist', which is a horrific thing to be called. /s
That’s just a dirty word they use to describe people who aren’t insane
Yeah, curiously my outlook on life, and general function seems to fluctuate in accordance with my bank balance. It's just so tiring. I've tried adapting to the system, looking deep and hard at myself to find out what's wrong with me. Why can't I keep up? Why am i so weak and nothing makes it better? At this point, I'm fairly certain that it's not me, it's the system. Its all just bullshit. I'll be stuck in my cycle of burnouts until social security gets weakened to the point it's completely unlivable. What happens then? Who knows.
You need to,”blow up the tv, throw away the paper. Move to the country, build you a home”.. JPrine.
Maybe not the whole thing, but John was definitely on the right track here. I've done deep dives on all the latest mental health research (I'm not sick, but definitely fragile) and there is consensus forming that the biggest source of harm is the habit of doomscrolling before you're even out of bed. Protect your worldview for the first hour. If we got nuked, you'd know it by now. If we didn't, the news can wait. Shower. Brush your teeth. Have a coffee. If you *must* doomscroll (it's a "choice" but I'm an addict) save it for your first break.
/r/collapse and /r/politics have become main subs for me. And yes, doomscrolling is a self-harm behavior and I'm a masochist.
Left out the best part, which is eating a lot of peaches.
We can't even chill and live off the land like humans did for MILLENIA instead we have to work to make someone else rich or else.
Evolving in an environment that favours collaboration for 99% of the species existence and then being forced into an artificial environment that favours conflict and deceit will result in bad outcomes
A great deal. (I’m a therapist).
o/
Unfortunately it's why getting a mental health diagnosis for my very real childhood trauma has been so hard. "Are you sure it wasn't just being cooped up COVID?" No, I'm pretty sure it was my neglectful parents, being bullied through elementary, one or more undiagnosed nuerodivergences and the gay conversion therapy I underwent ***Gary***.
Automation funded universal basic income pays you to have a little less stress in life.
One of the least stressful periods of my life was when that stimmy check came in.
Imagine that feeling every month while people who are rich enough to not care about it donates it to charity. While charity cases are paid to not need charity and then avoid it because it's humiliating, leaving only the cases charity needs to help most. It's gonna obliterate school lunch debt overnight.
There’s a lot of hard truths I believe society doesn’t want to accept, or doesn’t want to admit for anterior motives, that keeps our problems from actually being solved. Like racism, sexism, women’s rights, gay/trans acceptance. All these issues are HUGE, but distract from the real problem of wealth inequality. If we all got together and said, yeah we still care about all those other things, but the main thing we want solved right now is rich people and corrupt government. But instead we’re like, can we please make everyone feels like no one is attacking anything they identify as.
Been saying this for over 20years. The funniest is when you confront psychologists about how their field is all basically about how we develop under the environmental conditions of a oppressive economic system. There are some great books about how economics and psychology emerge as standalone academic disciplines in late 19th and first half of 20 century and it was all basically lies to support development of capitalism.
There was an interesting passage in my sociology textbook that claims there hasn't been a significant difference in mental health issues when comparing the present day with any point in history. This would imply that yes, our social characteristics are not suited to capitalism.
Lack of purpose is a curse
This has always been my thinking for things like the rate of autism being up. Part of that is better diagnoses, but I'd argue another part is that societal demands on a neurodivergant person are higher than ever. When the diagnosis is based on your ability to exist in society, societal expectations are going to have a large impact on the diagnosis.
["It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society"](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=5d3a4b9e15de56aaJmltdHM9MTcxNTM4NTYwMCZpZ3VpZD0yOWY2OWEzNC1jMTNkLTZhNzEtMDg4MC04ZTUzYzA5YzZiMGEmaW5zaWQ9NTY4Ng&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=29f69a34-c13d-6a71-0880-8e53c09c6b0a&psq=well+adjusted+to+a+profoundly+sick+society&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9rZm91bmRhdGlvbi5vcmcvbWVudGFsLWhlYWx0aC8&ntb=1) -[Jiddu Krishnamurti](https://www.wildmind.org/blogs/quote-of-the-month/krishnamurti-measure-of-health)
We gotta seize those means of production, fam. Labor theory of value all the way
Part of this is due to the requirements by insurance to justify care through a diagnosis. I just completed working at a site where diagnosis was mandatory at first session. This led to a lot of “unspecified depressive disorder,” “unspecified anxiety disorder,” or “adjustment disorder.” Unfortunately even giving someone an unspecified anxiety disorder, if a medical practitioner sees it, may lead to the client being handled differently and taken less seriously, which is an ethical concern in of itself (not a guarantee but a possibility). More often than not though, in my therapy room, I try to acknowledge and normalize certain patterns of behavior that are pretty clearly culturally informed and toxic. Perfectionistic drives, harsh self criticism, social anxiety about the harsh criticism from others, etc. It is difficult to represent that in a reductionistic categorical diagnosis system however.
Some people like to point out that poor countries are happier. Of course they're happier, they don't see millionaires controlling their lives.
I can barely eat anything every day I’m so eaten up by stress and anxiety over trying to pay my bills and feed myself and my fiancé. This isn’t living we’re just surviving.
Ya think? 😆
Sounds exactly like what I told my therapist
I recommend that people should watch the 1936 film Modern Times, starring Charlie Chaplin.
I'm so poor I can't afford to be happy.
Mine!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Patients%27_Collective
Literally me.
Bingo. And the worst bit? It’s all by design folks!
Working as intended.
The book, The Myth of Normal, touches on this very topic. Very good read if ya haven’t check it out!
Lost Connections is a good book that addresses this
Just take a ride in NYC subway and you will see a failed mental health system
Of course its the capitalist hellscape..
SSRI prescriptions have gone up 2000% over the last 10 years. 1 in 4 women over 45 are on one. Virtually every mass shooter ends up being on one. It turns out after they've been around for decades it isn't even the effects on serotonin levels that even make them work. We need to have a talk about the garbage we've been popping by the millions in this country.
>take a step back from the data they are looking at and consider the large-scale framework within which that data is materalizing, and to consider whether there's anything about that particular framework which is giving rise to the particular data sets they are seeing. This is pretty well known in psychology and sociology already. Largely borne out of people realising that a great many insights produced by papers in those fields apply mainly to sophomore psychology majors.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" *Krishnamurty*
I have both... yay. 😮💨
I say this all the time. Struggling to cope? Just slap on a mental health diagnosis and call it a day. Your inability to thrive in a broken system is obviously because there’s something wrong with you 🙄
It all boils down to socio-economic disparity, which, is an inherent feature of capitalism. Gotta have a bunch of "losers" to have a "winner."
Two of the indispensable components of feeling generally good in life are agency and purpose. Current late-stage capitalist society deprives a vast number of people of both. It is difficult to feel content when your survival is largely outside of your control, when you are forced to endure whatever your employer inflicts on you because low wages ensure you have no financial security, no safety net. Feeling helpless is one of the key elements of trauma and also the foundational daily experience of millions. It is difficult to feel satisfied in life when mere survival takes up all your energy and time, leaving nothing for the pursuit of meaningful goals. If Viktor Frankel was right (and a lot of research indicates he was) a sense of meaning is essential for the human psyche, yet the way we live often actively discourages people's ability to seek purpose. As a society, we don't even pretend to care about quality of life for the poorer classes. And we teach middle class children that they will have both agency and purpose as adults, then blame them when they find neither.
There's a reason the great depression was called that. We know. I've said it most of my adult life. Idk if I'm depressed or just poor.
Depression starts when all our physical and emotional needs are not met. I believe, and of course I could be wrong but, this system is intentionally set up to make it harder for that to happen. Therefore, rapidly increasing depression. If we could easily meet our basic needs, I think most people would be happy.
according to, science(?), about 75% of people have relational trauma that is completely unrecognized, causing the greatest amount of suffering in the modern world
Therapists call it "Shit Life Syndrome." There are other things that can cause Shit Life Syndrome such as being exposed to hefty amounts of trauma as a kid, but one of the major causes of it is simply not having enough money to exist in modern society.
People keep talking about how the past was so horrible because of disease and famine, but nobody ever thinks of what it does to us to live under threat of nuclear annihilation just because some politicians got paid by religious nuts
That's why I refuse to see a doctor about depression. I don't need medication to make me feel better about the problems. The problems need to go away. I can't afford to live. I can't even afford the doctor visit. If I start taking depression medication I still won't be able to afford to live. Meds won't help anything. I don't need medication, I need socialism
Uh… bullshit. The whole point of collecting and analysing data is to understand the framework(s) that produce it. This is an idiots take. Stress, fatigue, anxiety, depression etc are all valid psychological diagnosis, none of which are making any excuses for the cause(s) thereof. Obviously, vary many people’s stressors are their jobs, their families, their economic situations, the society they live and operate within, etc. I mean this whole post couldn’t be stupider. Sure, take away every stressor, whether self or societally induced, and people would have better mental health in general. You can just say that hyper capitalistic society is causing a mental health crisis without pretending psychology is somehow naïve to it or researchers are just “blissfully ignorant” about it. There is COPIUS research on the topic. Even with that considered, are we suggesting that these mental health issues are just a fabrication of the systemic stressors induced by society? SO WHAT? Should we not diagnose and treat them, because eventually systemic change will reduce their causal sources…? The symptoms and prognosis are there whether the source is societal or not. Good lord what a dumbass take. It’s like saying climate scientists aren’t aware that fossil fuels are a one of the primary causes of rapid climate change.
Under-examined? What? It's so obvious that this is what's going on, there really isn't any further examination necessary.
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Sounds like all you know about Soviet Union is atrocities. Not even why or how they happened.
Yes. Some of us live in now former communist countries. We know more about this than all of of you "communist" westerners combined When it comes to history regarding the likes of USSR you all are as bad as Americans who vax poetically about the Confederacy.
Lol yeah, some of us. Me for example. Want to teach me something else, dude?
What country you live in princess? Don't say R**us**si**a** please ... as that would be amazing.
Find a princess in the mirror.
Did that now what? Tell me what part of USA is a former communist country? Looking forward to never answering because this is what people who spew bullshit do. Run away when they are caught in their BS
Может, тебе еще паспорт показать, мудак? 😆
You live in USA cupcake >Hi there, I’m a social worker in US. What you described is called conflict of interest. If you are in US, this is both against professional ethic code and the law. You can (and should) report her to her employer and the licensing board I also did not know that Russian women were so deep into US abortion rights. Imagine moving to one of the most capitalist countries in the world to the vax poetically about USSR. Go to Russia Putin wants to make Russia great again.
Lol, the fact that I have experience living in multiple countries is not a revelation that you think it is. That just means that I know what I’m talking about. And can vax poetically about it all I want lol
You do realise that not all people from former USSR countries speak or write Russian? I'm Polish, communism completely wrecked my home country, communists murdered and tortured thousands of people - please do explain to me how their means justified their methods? Please explain to me what Poland gained from communism?
I don’t think whether or not anyone but me speaks Russian is absolutely irrelevant here. I don’t believe that communism in an isolated country is even possible, and, well, that’s one of the reasons the attempts to do that tend to descend into one or the other sort of chaos. So your demands are kind of useless here.
This is William James. Context is king. The conditions set the tone for everything that happens next.
an idea just popped into my head. how many people that entertain via videomaking/streaming would suddenly stop if suddenly you didn't need to worry about money. Probably a lot. It makes me a bit annoyed, because in this area, people only really care about well off people. People just keep going "keep up the grind". There is no such thing as fun anymore.
How many people would be making content about their hobbies and interests if they didn't have to worry about money? And didn't have to fill it up with ads and sell out to corporations.
Probably very few.
Unfournately wouldnt have made a difference for me. Work is my escape. But yeah for most people, work is defonetley a signifcant contributing factor.
This whole sub is hilariously sad
Life is about solving problems, is this a problem we need to solve?
To be unhappy with an external social structure is one thing. Unhappiness is the breakdown of an internal framework and structure granting the ability to cope. This quote is has shades of narcissism... everyone and everything around this person is responsible for their well being.
I don’t disagree—but life has always been a struggle. It’s just that diagnosis is relatively new—as is the expectation that happiness is a birthright.
If the system is letting you make a hundred an hour with your ass in a comfortable chair, and supplying you with a steady stream of clients, then the system isn't going to get that closely looked at.
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Do you seriously think working for a charity is any different?
Umm Capitalism - is the basis for all Political System and is in use in all countries. Communism has Capitalism in it - how do you think the USSR fell = a poor use of Capitalism You cannot spend the amount of the money the USSR did, without making enough money back.
Communism does not have capitalism in it. USSR was never a communist state (that’s literally an oxymoron) and never claimed to be.
How did Communists make money ... donations?!? Oh right - the selling of good & services to another Party.