Venting So bright but still so clueless?

[FTL.Wanderer]

Year after year, the publications pile up about increasing suicide rates. But the most vocal "experts" keep drawing the same conclusion--that the problem is a lack of access to (their) clinical mental health services. I read the opening phrase from one specialist in the article linked to earlier and hoped they'd finally talk at length about the effects of joblessness, homelessness, exploding costs of living while wages have stagnated or plummeted, record reports of loneliness and social isolation... But no. Instead they say, "We need to start treating these deaths seriously and respecting these survivors by upping our game in public health."

And while the article later goes on to report, "Some experts say reducing the suicide rate won't occur without examining the environments people live in or larger societal ills, such as economic insecurity and discrimination that may drive people to despair," I've been reading the same footnote in mental health for decades. Yet still, here we are. With record-and-growing wealth inequality scholars conclude is among the biggest threats to democracy. Growing homelessness during the pandemic. Corporations right now mobilizing their armies of lobbyists to coerce Capitol Hill to pass legislation to roll back workers' rights, shield themselves from covid-19 related wrong doing lawsuits, and even threaten workers who seek legal compensation for on-the-job injury. All while study after study finds the people we rely on most (sweet-soundingly dubbed "essential workers") are very often among the worst paid, least life-secure, most desperate among us. To say nothing of the bigotries many people struggle through every day, mercilessly whittling away at their self esteem--even their ability to get or hold a job for money to live.

But, as the article above adds, we're "broken." And we should be fixed in the very system that breaks and abandons those without enough cash or exploitable characteristics. It exasperates me that these so-called experts feign shock at why suicide rates keep rising despite record pharmacological prescriptions, more and more power granted mental health clinicians, more frequent (and more brutal) law enforcement involvement in community mental health, and mental health public service announcements being plastered on nearly every public surface or introducing every online article that deals even remotely with depression or suicide.

Rant over.

 

[Silver]

It's impossible to fix society without massive changes so they point to other, more superficial improvements that could be made (even if they know the 'improvements' would change very little, they have to be seen as doing something).

 

[whywere]

I totally agree with both @FTL.Wanderer and @Silver that society is a joke when it comes to mental health. I have had 2 attepmts so far and I am in the Midwest in the U.S. and without Sanctioned Suicide and all the GREAT global family members here, I would have been gone. Society has 100% failed me as far as I have had so, so many judge me and have not even given me a second to say hi. also ALL the "mental health" aspects that I have experienced is either about money or ego, ie... who knows me better than me..NOT! Love to all my global family here!!! Walter

 

[moonchild]

It's incredibly frustrating. I understand it's easier to focus on increasing access to and/or the quality of psychiatric care, rather than fixing ~society~ as a whole. But even if the experts/researchers on some level understand that yeah, environment is a big deal, this whole approach and attitude towards it as a problem with the individual trickles down into the rest of society and it just becomes a truth. When politicians say we'll solve the mental health crisis and reduce suicides by investing in psychiatric care, people just eat it up. And then when therapy doesn't help someone who's barely getting their basic needs met, it's their own fault because well, they just didn't fully commit to therapy. Or they haven't found the right therapist. Or they should try a different medication.

 

[FTL.Wanderer]

It's incredibly frustrating. I understand it's easier to focus on increasing access to and/or the quality of psychiatric care, rather than fixing ~society~ as a whole. But even if the experts/researchers on some level understand that yeah, environment is a big deal, this whole approach and attitude towards it as a problem with the individual trickles down into the rest of society and it just becomes a truth. When politicians say we'll solve the mental health crisis and reduce suicides by investing in psychiatric care, people just eat it up. And then when therapy doesn't help someone who's barely getting their basic needs met, it's their own fault because well, they just didn't fully commit to therapy. Or they haven't found the right therapist. Or they should try a different medication.

This.