Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

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The power and control (the drugging, incarceration, and mental chains) that the Medical Model (psychiatry and Big Pharma) provides for keeping the potentially rebellious sections of society under manageable control is an ESSENTIAL INSTITUTIONAL NECESSITY for the future of capitalism’s existence. The future of BOTH the capitalist system, and psychiatry and their Medical Model, are now forever inseparably bound. All future efforts to end all forms of psychiatric abuse in the world MUST accept this reality AND strategize accordingly. Interviewed by James Barnes. JB: The core theme of your excellent new book, ‘Sedated’, is the progressive medicalisation and individualising of emotional and psychological distress that has moulded all of our lives in the West since the 1980s. This trend, as you illustrate, is deeply and intimately tied to the rise of the neoliberal political project in the US and UK via Reagan and Thatcher. You paint a very powerful picture of the insidious reframing of our often socio-politically derived distress in terms of dysfunctions in the individual, ultimately serving the political status quo but harmful to our wellbeing. I wonder if you could expand on the theme of neoliberalism as it pertains to our ‘mental health’ and give us a taste of the key strands in the book? This is because this level of social breakdown will create major divisions within the military itself (creating different well armed factions) and within various police forces etc., and of course various parts of the country. And since there are already so many guns in this country, people will just end up confiscating them from WHEREVER they are stored.

Sedated – Atlantic Books Sedated – Atlantic Books

About ‘A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs: The Truth About How They Work And How To Come Off Them.’ JD: Psychiatry is not a science, even though, of course, it aspires to make use of scientific findings to guide its practices (as to who often produces those ‘findings’ we’ll leave for another day…). If psychiatry is not a science, then what it is? Well, many social scientists may call it a set of cultural practices and ideas or what the Harvard anthropologist and psychiatrist, Arthur Kleinmann, has called an ‘explanatory model’. The term ‘explanatory model’ I believe fits psychiatry very well, insofar as it is defined as a system of interlinked ideas and practices that frame and respond to suffering in ways that, in my view, mostly serve powerful social, political and professional interests.As a helper myself, I decided, there has to be a way to heal without functioning as their empathy (by rendering my clients disable). I want them to keep their empathy and still heal. I empower them to keep their empathy and heal with it with me or with them alone. https://www.roehampton.ac.uk/life-sciences/news/dr-james-davies-publishes-new-book-sedated-how-modern-capitalism-created-our-mental-health-crisis/ really really enjoyed his points about the unnecessary overmedicalisation of mental illnesses in late capitalism, and i agree that focussing on improving policies, community and environment is vital, however i found the book a bit repetitive and long. Finally, it has decollectivised suffering: dispersing our socially caused suffering into different self-residing dysfunctions, thereby diminishing the shared and collective experiences that have so often in the past been a vital spur for social change. JB: What I found eye opening in ‘Sedated’, was just how entrenched and pervasive this ideology is in our society. The ways you illustrate how the neoliberal ethos — competition for resources, productivity over wellbeing and ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking — is at play in schools and hospitals, for example, makes this quite clear. It is not just the habitual stress and anxiety that results from this, but a whole experience of others and the world in terms of “us vs them, haves vs have nots.” Our value under this rubric is earned — by what have and do — rather being to do with intrinsic human qualities. This ethos has become so embedded in our society that for many it can simply seem to be a given. How do you think it became so powerful? Sometimes mental health services focus too much on what is wrong with someone as opposed to what happened to someone. So for example if you have an increased workload and you're not sleeping and therefore this is bringing you down and you feel a lot of stress and pressure it is often the remit of professionals to say that that person is suffering from depression rather than from an increased workload that could be managed and sorted rather than trying to manage the label of depression. Many well-being courses that are supplied by companies such as the NHS have no evidence to show that they work in regards to reducing stress and depression. If you have an increased workload for example, you find your job boring and you might have some personal problems it is totally natural to feel some signs of depression or sadness in your life but perhaps managing what it is it's bothering you might be more important than just going on the well-being course where are you practising mindfulness techniques. As already pointed out, no research shows that these kinds of courses actually support and help people and make any changes to their well-being and mental health status.

Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

Those services forgot so long ago that they ONLY have employment due to needs, which they use not to support, or serve, but rather oppress and overpower the vulnerable.

we exile sufferers to ‘experts’ in consulting rooms sitting far outside the community walls”…”there is no community, no shared cosmology, no ritual coming-together around the person’s pain” Davies powerfully argues that the rise of mental illness and the rising prescriptions of psychiatric drugs (he particularly focuses on anti-depressants) is due to a model of mental illness where the individual is blamed and pathologised for their rational responses to socially caused distress - aka capitalism and neo-liberalism. What a lot of treatments do is blame the individual, rather than understand the life circumstances that have led to their distress. The book particularly affected me because I dropped out of CBT treatment and felt like a failure and like I hadn't worked hard enough to fix the way I thought, and there is a whole section dedicated to CBT and why it is ineffective and harmful in blaming victims. You say you’re from an ‘Irish’ culture. I won’t inquire whether you’re from that benighted kip or whether you’re Irish American. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that maudlin book by Sebastian Barry ‘The Second Scripture’ about an Irish woman who was incarcerated for life in a mental hospital having become pregnant outside marriage. That story is a fairy story by comparison to yours. We are effectively encouraged to use material comforts to treat our distress. Buying something new, something better, will make you feel good. Eating, drinking, smoking, holidays or new clothes become crutches, but profitable for capitalism. At the same time, governments and authorities lecture people about taking personal responsibility for our health and consumer choices. This is a social catch-22, since we have not had governments with any interest in alleviating our distress. We are simply being seen as a source of profits when in distress. A social cure is needed Our suffering is now being blamed on us, not the circumstances of our lives. We are in this way objectified as simply a tool to help the accumulation of profits for the pharmaceutical companies. It is no accident that the profits of pharmaceutical corporations have mushroomed since the 1980s. Therapy for capital’s benefit

Crucial conversations: with Joanna Moncrieff and James Davies Crucial conversations: with Joanna Moncrieff and James Davies

we are no longer a small and symbolically inconsequential minority – we are a growing and ever more powerful majority, with organisations like the World Health Organisation and the UN gradually aligning with this potent call for change.”

For all those who want a better world, we must certainly be involved in “changing minds” in revolutionary ways and in a revolutionary direction. Helping ourselves and other people become more rational and empathetic about every aspect of institutional forms of human oppression, and seeking newer revolutionary alternative economic and political forms of social organization etc. beyond capitalism. No doubt, they wanted to murder a person that was distressed by 9/11/2001, and stands against the never ending wars that, that distressing event has created. Oh, because distress caused by a distressing event, is distress caused by a “chemical imbalance” in one person’s brain? WTF! They don’t seem to know much of anything about the banking and monetary systems, which most definitely need reform. Their primary actual societal function is covering up child abuse and rape, for the mainstream paternalistic religions, which most definitely need reform. Not to mention, they cover up easily recognized medical mistakes, for a big Pharma misinformed – and all too often, incompetent, and honestly downright murderous – medical industry. Oh, and they want to steal everything from us artists who speak the truth, through our history recording artwork, and based upon our many years of research into all these corrupt industries. Di luar masalah pekerjaan, ada juga gaya hidup yg sengaja dibentuk oleh kapitalisme agar kalau kita stress larinya belanja aja. Alias, melakukan "retail therapy." Kita sendiri pasti ngerasain gempuran iklan di mana-mana. Mendorong kita buat jajan secara impulsif. JD: Neoliberalism is not just an economic paradigm but, like all such paradigms, it also entails a theory of human nature — a concept of what is healthy and unhealthy, what is moral and functional; what motivates us and what constitutes the good life. In this sense, neoliberalism is a ‘totalising system’ to use a sociological phrase — it does not solely advance a suite of economic directives, but also a set of guiding principles for living (principles that, by the way, mostly serve those very economic directives). Margaret Thatcher intuitively understood this vital link between economics and human psychology. She understood how economic policy (in her case, neoliberal economic policy) had the power to radically transform how people feel, act and behave. As she said two years into her term as UK Prime Minister, her aim was to use economic policy to change the mentality and character of the nation: ‘Economics are the method’, she confessed to the journalist Ronald Butt, ‘the objective is to change the heart and soul’. After talking about work, the book then goes on to discuss how the rise of these approaches are being used in educational establishments. The author begins with the rise of special educational needs. The number of people with special educational needs has doubled in 10 years since 2010. Now that number now accounts for almost 20% of all schoolchildren in education. This could be their speech, language, cognition, learning, or behavioural issues. However, the biggest increase in this number is those with a mental health problem be at anxiety, depression, ADHD and behavioural problems.