“depression wouldn’t be a mental illness in a different society that didn’t pathologize the symptoms!”
mate being unable to do and enjoy things sucks no matter what your sociopolitical surroundings are
That said, the prevalence of depression in Western society is strongly correlated with problems endemic to that society… but not because the “symptoms are pathologized”. Because it is a way of living that makes people feel habitually useless, hopeless, and alone.
No matter what kind of society you live in, having depression is never going to be pleasant, by definition. That said, Western society sure as hell makes it even worse. I mean, just off the top of my head, I can think of:
- The insistence that every adult be Independent and Self Reliant often stops people from asking for help, or stops them from receiving it.
- Depression doesn’t always leave you with enough energy even for self care. Meanwhile, schools and workplaces are designed to demand more energy than most non-mentally healthy people have to give.
- Depression can be unpredictable, hitting you hard with no warning. Most minimum wage and entry level jobs have little tolerance for employees who take too many sick days/miss shifts, so holding down a job becomes much more difficult when there are random days where you just can’t get out of bed.
- Mental illness is very much stigmatized. If teachers/coworkers/bosses find out that you’re depressed, or worse, taking medication to combat depression, it can cause all kinds of trouble.
Note that all of these things make it much harder for depressed people to earn money, since depression makes it harder to get educated, land a job, and keep it. Sure, there are ways to overcome or at least mitigate these symptoms, but almost all of them cost money. Medication costs money. Therapy costs money. Heck, even seeing a doctor costs money if you live in the states (or are getting screwed by the system in Canada). UV lamps to ward away Seasonal Affective Disorder cost money. White noise machines to combat insomnia cost money. Even taking a day off for self care costs money, in so far as it’s one day’s worth of income you won’t be getting.
As a general rule, any condition that both makes your life more expensive and reduces your ability to earn money is going to make your life at least a little hellish. It makes life into a horrible Catch 22 situation: To recover from illness, you need to take care of yourself, but before you can take care of yourself you need to recover from your illness. As for people who won’t ever recover, who might be able to get better but won’t ever be well, they’re basically just screwed.
But all those problems above are totally preventable. Society can’t magically make the neurological inability to feel pleasure into a pleasant experience, but it can sure as hell stop punishing people for being depressed. We could build a society that provides medical care for the people who need it, rather than just the ones who can afford it. We could build a society where people don’t have to work horrible, demeaning jobs just to afford food and shelter, so that depressed people could concentrate on taking care of themselves instead.
So, in summary, depression is always going to be a mental illness, but if society would stop demanding things that depressed people can’t give, depression wouldn’t have to be a disability.
I haven’t personally ever seen someone claim that “depression wouldn’t be a mental illness in a different society that didn’t pathologize the symptoms” but I can easily see how discourse like that gets started.
People with disabilities and mental illnesses have been trying to fight for their rights together. Those rights include stuff like
- being allowed to be different in ways that are not profitable and make you less suitable for a typical work environment under capitalism
- being allowed to get self-directed, pathology free health care
- being allowed to be ill without dying of a lack of money
- being allowed to take medication
- being allowed to not take medication
- being allowed to be mentally ill without being institutionalized against your will
- And more.
These are really great things to work on together.
Where it goes wrong is when people try to create one narrative about mental illnesses and disabilities that fits all people in their coalition.
When you do that you either get narratives like “all mental illnesses are just diseases of the brain that need to be treated like diseases of the body” OR narratives like “all mental illnesses are just diverse non-harmful states of being that need to be allowed to exist”. Neither is true.
But it’s an easy mistake to make. It happens all the time when coalitions against racism, sexist, homophobia, etc make the mistake of assuming that the people in their coalition have one coherent narrative or need one coherent narrative for the problem they are fighting.
If we want to have one narrative we need nuanced, multifaceted narratives that go way more like:
“Some mental illnesses are diseases of the brain that we need to treat seriously like diseases of the body. If they are hard on the person affected (really hard, not ‘if capitalism is hard on the person affected because of their mental illness) then they are for this person problems that need fixing. Other mental illnesses are
just diverse non-harmful states of being that need to be allowed to exist and trying to eradicate them amounts to attempted genocide. Some mental illnesses are bits of both. The only person that makes the choice whether their something is an illness or a neurodiverse state of existence is the person directly effected. Personal selfdetermination needs to be at the core of all our conversations on mental illness.”
QueerAnarchism 