Mental health and social control
By Jane Marni
Surely"mental health" means more than just being sedated. Perhaps this sounds harsh, but these are the treatments in current therapies, supported by the stereotyped image of what someone with a mental health concern is like.
Everyone has mental health concerns, be it down days or the stress of finding a job and paying the bills. Our profit-driven society has always been dog eat dog.
A person can be considered abnormal in thought/speech/appearance or behaviour. The immediate treatment is medication, and being told how to behave. The need to be like everyone else is stifling and a blatant put-down.
This mould is a means of social control; anyone not fitting into the society can be labelled and have their rights taken away.
A person considered to have mental health concerns tends to be hustled, conned and manipulated. There is no room for being oneself. Conform or else is the attitude.
So-called "crazy" people are intelligent, creative and genuine. Why is the individual treated as though subnormal, even pathological?
Zapping the brain with electric currents can hardly be an answer. Medication is often heavy tranquillisers. Individuals who are prescribed these drugs do not know what they are and are not told they are addictive.
Even the professionals who prescribe, administer and make these drugs know that they are not cures. However, they lull the sufferers into feeling that it just might be suitable.
There is also the cost of side-effects with these treatments. Such band-aid attempts at "rehabilitated individuals" turn into just another method of social control.
Believing that everything will be all right if I just talk to someone, can turn into a nightmare, if that "someone" is a mental health professional.
The system has to be in control. People are encouraged to get labelled, hooked on medication and blamed for "failing" in being someone they are not. Most of all, people feel, from the "support" given, that they owe the system something.
The system has no real solutions to mental health concerns. There is not enough money for adequate support and rights in mental health. The system does not want to create real solutions because then it would be questioned and it would have to take real responsibility. Fight for your rights! Fight the system!