A while ago I was dealing with a lot of shit in my life and I wasn't coping well, so I engaged the mental healthcare system. I tried telehealth therapy and was told 'your needs are beyond what telehealth can handle, good luck'. The number of times I've been told 'good luck' by a mental healthcare provider as they're dismissing me makes me feel sick.
Psychiatrists were no better, they only want to talk about medication. There's no time for discussion of anything else.
Group therapy was a joke, no matter how much I failed at being a responsible adult I was told that I'm doing my best. Well, if doing my best means not being able to hold a job or support myself, then it's not good enough. In the animal world, individuals that are too depressed to support (feed) themselves die. Things aren't much different for a person living in the USA.
I engaged the mental healthcare system because I started failing at life and wanted help succeeding again, but instead of making me a person able to succeed I was told to reframe my failures as successes. Maybe that works if you have wealthy family to fall back on, but for the rest of us being able to earn a living doing productive work is vital to wellbeing. Telling a poor person that it's ok not to work because of their mental condition just traps them in a shitty life forever and they will never be able to be happy regardless of how many prozac they take.
The fix is as simple as looking at Maslow's pyramid. Make it so no one is worried about having a warm bed or enough to eat. Give opportunities for meaningful work that earns money and contributes positively to the world. Make it easy to become part of a social hierarchy and positively interact with other people. But all that isn't feasible, so let's give people pills to fix 'shit life syndrome' while leaving them with a shit life and no hope of improving it.
A while ago I was dealing with a lot of shit in my life and I wasn't coping well, so I engaged the mental healthcare system. I tried telehealth therapy and was told 'your needs are beyond what telehealth can handle, good luck'. The number of times I've been told 'good luck' by a mental healthcare provider as they're dismissing me makes me feel sick.
Psychiatrists were no better, they only want to talk about medication. There's no time for discussion of anything else.
Group therapy was a joke, no matter how much I failed at being a responsible adult I was told that I'm doing my best. Well, if doing my best means not being able to hold a job or support myself, then it's not good enough. In the animal world, individuals that are too depressed to support (feed) themselves die. Things aren't much different for a person living in the USA.
I engaged the mental healthcare system because I started failing at life and wanted help succeeding again, but instead of making me a person able to succeed I was told to reframe my failures as successes. Maybe that works if you have wealthy family to fall back on, but for the rest of us being able to earn a living doing productive work is vital to wellbeing. Telling a poor person that it's ok not to work because of their mental condition just traps them in a shitty life forever and they will never be able to be happy regardless of how many prozac they take.
The fix is as simple as looking at Maslow's pyramid. Make it so no one is worried about having a warm bed or enough to eat. Give opportunities for meaningful work that earns money and contributes positively to the world. Make it easy to become part of a social hierarchy and positively interact with other people. But all that isn't feasible, so let's give people pills to fix 'shit life syndrome' while leaving them with a shit life and no hope of improving it.