Gallup poll shows gulf residents depressed. And why shouldn't they be? Depression has its roots in the economic system, in capitalism

A young Iraq veteran kills his pregnant wife, their 3 year old and himself. Another guy shoots a bunch of people including his wife because his eggs were too hot apparently. This week there are shootings in Boston, Florida, Austen Texas. What annoys me most about this is that the system is never put forward as the major cause of it all.

In the case of the young Iraq veteran I remember the report I read mentioning that infidelity or financial woes didn’t seem an issue. Er, pardon me! Iraq? This is the elephant in the room that they conveniently ignore. There will be many more disturbed and mentally ill young men and women coming back from these wars fought on behalf of the corporations.

We cannot leave out the effect of society on us as individuals. Plants in polluted soil will be stunted or die and the same happens to humans living in a polluted, insecure and destructive social system. Capitalism makes us sick.

A Gallup survey released this week and covered in the media found that depression cases are up 25% in the gulf coast region of the US since the BP oil spill. I am certain that this trend most likely existed prior to this disaster and was probably intensified by Katrina as well. A National Institute of Mental Health study done before Katrina, found that only 6 percent of area residents had likely mental illnesses. Both Katrina and the BP spill which killed 11 workers were not natural disasters, they were market driven. The casualties in these episodes, both human and environmental, were casualties of the economic system in which we live.

It’s not just the immediate effects of such disasters either, like losing ones home or job. It’s the general insecurity and the witnessing of such catastrophic damage to the world around us, the land, the oceans and the creatures that live on and in them with us. 
“The survey said people along the Gulf reported feeling sad" according to the reports, "people are "worried and stressed after the spill…….. Another survey found that more than 40 percent of people in coastal Mississippi reported feeling stress after the BP geyser blew, a 15 percent increase from before.”

An earlier study found that 13 percent of coastal adults from Louisiana to Florida suffered probable serious mental illnesses after the spill; this means something to me. It shows that people care about the world in which we live and we are not oblivious to the environmental and human crises around us. In Gulfport, Miss., 42 percent of the patients surveyed at one mental health center said they were sad or depressed because of the spill. This is natural for us as humans. Why would we not be depressed? And imagine what sort of numbers we would be talking about if we were discussing Iraqi o families or those living in the slums of Mumbai or Rio.

Symptoms of mental illness are, insomnia, anxiety, depression, anger, substance abuse and domestic violence all of which are among the most common problems reported by mental health agencies. “It’s like a virus,” says one mental health worker whose clinic is receiving twice many patients as in 2009. Another resident who runs a day-care center notices the changes among the children:

"They're throwing desks, kicking chairs," she said. "It's sad. With this, people do not have hope. They cannot see a better time."


“They cannot see a better time” this is an astute observation and is one of the major causes of concern and depression among working people. Endless wars, economic uncertainty and no force in society offering a plausible explanation for it all. It’s either the wrath of god or our own individual fault, explanations that cause people to internalize the anger and blame ourselves for crises that are not of our own making. Not seeing a way out is a major obstacle to eradicating depression. If we don’t see there is a way out, why struggle to change things?

This is why the issue of the system is always left out of the equation. We must not question how society is organized; how we produce the things we need in society and who owns the means for doing this etc. After all, the market knows best, capitalism is the only social system that works; humanity cannot exist without capitalists and their never-ending quest for profit. Capitalism is the end of civilization. It will mean the end of civilization as we know it, that’s for sure.

When the old Soviet Union collapsed they announced it as the failure of communism. Not only was it not communism, it is important to recognize that here they refer to a system that failed even if they called this totalitarian regime by the wrong name. But in the capitalist economy, every mass killing, every oil spill, every economic collapse and the horrors that accompany them; these are all the failings of bad apples and failed or greedy individuals; it is never capitalism’s fault. It is never suggested that these crises are an inherent and unsolvable by-product of the so-called “free market”.

This is a major obstacle to the development of a mass movement for change in the US. It is something the leaders of the trade Unions could change given the resources at their command, but they support in every way the market and its masters; they will not act without massive pressure from below to do so and where we can we must act without them. Their role also holds back the development of a mass movement for change but none of these things will prevent it forever and throughout the world there are major struggles against the horrors of the market. Even in the US people are fighting back, but the media here is among the most censored of all the developed world.

While we must feel for the sadness that surveys like these show exist among the population we should recognize the positive side of it. It shows a very powerful tendency within human beings for decency, security and a respect for community and the natural world that gives us life. It is this tendency that provides the basis for resistance, for the class struggle that is always present but will come to the surface with a vengeance in the future. This is the war that is worth winning, the building of a democratic socialist society and world where each human being can fulfill our highest potential in harmony with nature.

Donald Trump and Bill gates would tell us that this is utopian, that human nature is naturally selfish and greedy. Don’t religious books tell us the same?

Don’t believe any of it.