Mental Health and Therapy’s Victims.
Accident, anxiety, injury, decay, disease, aging and death have always existed. So why has ‘mental health’ become under such a large, and dare I say it, inclusive umbrella? Compared with previous generations, are our times that much worse and giving rise to an avalanche of mental illness?
Well, more is known clinically about a range of mental disorders, and we are encouraged to discuss them more. No doubt owing to the benefits of advanced medical science and psychological insight. But let’s dig a bit deeper because there’s more going on than the benefits of increased disclosure, acknowledgement, and medical advances.
There has always been mental illness, but only a few decades ago, few people seemed to suffer from it. That might not be true, but one thing is obvious: more people claim mental health issues today than those who suffered from mental illness in the not-too-recent past.
Even so, it wasn’t clear where the definition of mental illness began or finished. Presumably, however, clinicians believed their understanding and treatments rested on an objective foundation. What lay behind a person’s significant disturbance and/or impairment were a cause(s) that could be discerned with specific psychiatric training, discernment and insight.
‘Mental Health’ though, is not the same as ‘mental illness’. The changed nomenclature reflects a not-so-subtle shift in emphasis. Mental illness is a condition diagnosable by the required expert. It fits within the rubric of objective analysis and clinical assessment. Mental health, on the other hand, is frequently and increasingly so, an exercise in self-diagnosis conditioned and sustained by feelings which may or may not have an objective basis.
Beneath the concept of mental illness is a belief that suffering is common to the human condition. Anxiety, consequences, pain, disappointment, and unfulfilled hope, despite adversity and failure, are normal. They are mental, physical and emotional issues that were not welcome, but expected as every individual sought to navigate life.
There used to be an unwritten but generally accepted understanding that life is not fair. The biblical admonition to be strong and of good courage was woven into our psyche. If you were a boy, you wanted to be a man, and a man above all was strong and courageous. If you were a girl, you wanted to be a woman who was equally courageous, but also gentle. Growing up was more about character, facing life’s issues and maturing through them, than constantly looking to feelings and taking one’s psychological temperature. Overcoming was more important than victimhood.
I suspect the changed understanding of suffering has given rise to ‘mental health ’, which now includes introspective and fluid feelings that probably don’t rest on objective reality, and the response continues to be a vocabulary to reflect the increasing belief in therapy’s power to describe and ameliorate suffering. The sensate culture is in charge, and suffering no longer has any clear moral component.
It’s reasonable to claim Western societies (especially universities and schools) have moved from speaking about unhappiness, anxiety and ordinary adolescent difficulties, to describing them in the language of mental health. And there’s a new, even more generic descriptor to muddy the water: ‘wellbeing’. And so a mental health problem is now anything that the self believes diminishes their well-being.
C. S. Lewis has something insightful to say about this shift in The Abolition of Man:
And here in a concession to therapy I can’t resist a trigger warning. Lewis’s use of the generic masculine might offend some readers.
Something unites magic and applied science, while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem has been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution has been knowledge, self-discipline and virtue. For magic and applied science alike, the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.
It seems to this writer at least that the ballooning mental health umbrella is a consequence of trying to ‘subdue reality to the wishes of men’. Reality – the true nature of things – is indeed being steadily transformed by the magic of therapy.
The former understanding of having the soul conform to reality through ‘knowledge, self-discipline and virtue’ has all but gone, and the shift has had a significant intellectual and cultural effect. Human behaviour is no longer evaluated on the basis of right or wrong, but on a psychological continuum of ‘well-being.’ The fact that a soul actually needs moral guidance is glossed over or forgotten.
Phillip Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic sums up the paradigm shift. We have moved away from asking what is ‘the good life,’ and ‘What ought I to do?’ towards ‘How can I feel better?’ Moral imperatives concerned with courage, temperance, perseverance, duty, responsibility and self-control are replaced with feelings, self-esteem, trauma and psychological well-being.
Perhaps most compelling is the radical change in the concept of self that comes with losing any belief in human sinfulness. That is, the belief that human beings are flawed creatures prone to believing the lie. And that lie is that we alone can discern, without divine guidance, the difference between good and evil, and so lose the capacity to enjoy forgiveness and how to forgive those who offend us. We are all on a continuum awaiting diagnosis and therapy.
The modern therapeutic mind casts us as autonomous psychological individuals trying to feel well. At best, this is a deficient view; at worst, it is a lie. The human creature is an embodied spirit who stands in a relationship to a creator God, other people, and within a moral order. The primary question should be, “How should I live?” not “How should I feel?
I’m not claiming young people (or anyone else) simply imagine their problems. Real issues peculiar to our times that young people, in particular, have to navigate include the genuine pressures of social media, which can leave today’s young people vulnerable to exploitation and harm in ways previous generations could not comprehend. And there are, and always have been, genuine disorders of the mind that require sympathy, understanding, practical help, and proper clinical diagnosis and treatment.
However, when the language of mental health becomes ubiquitous, imbued with victimhood, and accompanied by a loss of confidence in objective truth, the protective discipline of morality and the importance of character tend to be superseded. And a situation arises – the self-creating individual, trying to protect his or her vulnerability, is encouraged to find refuge in offence. Pride replaces humility as a primary virtue. Self-respect, once the sustainer of humility, is exchanged for self-esteem, the sustainer of pride.
(Part 2 of ‘Mental Health and Therapy’s Victims’ will explore the significant intellectual and cultural history that got us here)
*Bruce Logan is a Family First board member
