Social Issues
Out Of The Borders
It’s just a disease.
The erasure of systemic socioeconomic problems in the mental health and suicide discourse. by Luís Lowden da Silva
“mental illness: any of a broad range of medical conditions (such as major depression,
schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or panic disorder) that are marked primarily by sufficient disorganization of personality, mind, or emotions to impair normal psychological functioning and cause marked distress or disability and that are typically associated with a disruption in normal thinking, feeling, mood, behaviour, interpersonal interactions, or daily functioning.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Warning: this article discusses themes of men-
tal health and suicide that might be disturbing or upsetting for some.
concerns about their mental health. While most certainly understandable in many cases in which people pose a risk to themselves or others, it results in the de facto criminalization of certain kinds of neurodivergence. It is no longer possible to pretend that these definitions are purely medical ones; the psychiatrists that write them must, in the process of doing so, define what is a normal thinking and functioning process, things that are informed by whichever ideologies they sympathize with.
In 1968, the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was released. Among its collection of 182 alleged disorders, one can find homosexuality. Although it has been removed in the subsequent editions, room for questioning remains: who can determine what is “normal thinking” and “daily functioning”? How much does the ruling ideology determine what we consider unhealthy behaviour, The expression “disruption in daily functioning” and how much is psychology helping in uphold- is too quite loaded. Is it not healthy to have daily functioning disrupted by the death of a loved ing the status quo? one? Is despair in hopeless circumstances not The right to decline treatment is typically re- a rational response? By describing humans as served to anyone who is suffering from any ill- merely broken parts in a machine that needs to ness of the body. However, during the process be fixed, we rarely ever have to question if the of diagnosing mental conditions, we sometimes machine is suitable for a fulfilling human life. By also rule people to be unfit to decide whether or diagnosing someone with depression, anxiety, not to receive treatment. The line between med- or some other imbalance of brain chemistry, it ical attention and imprisonment becomes then becomes unnecessary to ever think about how blurred. Sectioning is the practice of keeping this imbalance actually came to be. Through people in a hospital regardless of their will due to masking every mental health issue as a purely
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