Mental Illness: Capitalism Makes Us Sick

Don't Worry, it's not you. Fight back is the cure

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444,retired

“The damage is on the scale of the global financial crisis”. 

We are not talking about climate change with this quote as that looming catastrophe has far more savage consequences than the global financial crisis. The quote is what Paul Gionfriddo, president of Mental Health America, has to say about the horrific state of mental health in US society.

No doubt the most ardent Trump supporters, if they can drag themselves away from their violent obsession with a small, brown skinned Somali refugee, will consider “fake news”, the most recent findings from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which reveal what Business Week calls a “national mental health epidemic”.

The report points out that 2017 was quite a year for suicides in the US with 47,000 deaths. There were 1.4 million suicide attempts so some might say it’s a fair survival rate and a confirmation of the skill and dedication of the AMT’s who are not paid enough for their work I might add. They helped me out a week ago.

From 2006 through 2016 the suicide rate has been increasing 2% a year but that’s not the worst of it. 70,000 died from drug overdoses in 2017 while another 17.3 million, or 7%, of U.S. adults reported suffering at least one major depressive episode in the past year Business Week reports.  It is widely known that US life expectancy has been declining, including among the white population, a “privileged” group (some more so than others), and has done so for the past three years, the first three year decline since 1915 to 1918. Let’s see, what was happening then?  And the Predator in Chief declares immigration to be a National Security issue and a war on Iran necessary to save our way of life. I might differ and argue that I think all the threats of war, nuclear as well as conventional, that are initiated by the US government might be a major contributor to depression and the figures above.

The BW article does touch on the causes of this mental health epidemic mentioning “social and environmental factors” and that, “life circumstances matter a lot.

The author, Cynthia Koons correctly points out that the, U.S. is home to some particularly challenging “psychological stressors” that can lead to the many conditions that fall under the heading of mental health problems: “stagnant wages; rising health-care costs; the proliferation of highly addictive opioids after a marketing push from major drug companies; the disappearance of well-paid blue-collar jobs and the emergence of the gig economy; the lack or limited availability of treatment and services.

The US ruling class is concerned that the mental health epidemic is hurting business costing some $80 to $100 billion annually according to the Center for Workplace Mental Health that also claimed that two thirds of those that have mental health or substance abuse problems don’t receive any treatment from doctors. The UK’s Lancet Commission reckons mental health “disorders” could cost the global economy $$16 trillion by 2020, that’s assuming climate change or nuclear conflict doesn’t get us first.

We are in the belly of the beast here in the US. Of all the advanced capitalist countries we have the worst health care system and social services. The dominant ideology that the individual is in control of their own destiny, that one’s condition is due to one’s own decisions, is very strong and this contributes to the mental health crisis as people blame themselves for predicaments they find themselves in that are not of their own making. No one rally believes Jeff Bezos pulled himself up by his bootstraps or Bill Gates is truly a “self made” man. Fear, alienation, wondering if they will be homeless or lose everything if they get sick is another trigger; there is little security in the land of the free and an economic slowdown is around the corner. I found myself in an ambulance last week and the first thing I asked the AMT’s was “Who is going to pay for this?”

What is notably absent from Business Week’s reporting of these findings is the mention of the term, capitalism. We do not live in a “system” it seems. There is a major crisis in Venezuela at the moment, partly driven by the failings of the Maduro regime and greatly exacerbated by the US and its economic warfare. The reader should recall that the US has tried for 20 years to undermine and destroy what Chavez began including supporting his kidnapping and potential assassination in 2002.  But whenever the US mass media reports on conditions in Venezuela, Cuba, or any country that resists US and global capitalism’s total domination and whose economy is struggling under this assault, it is reported as a failure of socialism.  When I first came to this country some workers told me that the British national health system was communist.

Major capitalist economic gurus are concerned and trying desperately to head off a major catastrophe. In Pythonesque style, the UK government created a Minister of Loneliness in 2018 in response to disturbing findings about social isolation. Tiny New Zealand unveiled a Wellbeing Budget this year to deal with mental health issues including services. For the US though public services are not popular with the owners of capital and the trade union hierarchy has traditionally failed to fight for them even opposing sick leave at one point. 

Business Week points out that the aforementioned NZ government’s mental health budget is 15 times greater on a per capita basis than what the US spends through its Mental Health Services Administration it reveals the immense political power the corporations have in the US with two political parties representing their interests. Business Week adds that Daniel Yohanna, noted that 50 beds per 100,000 would meet Americans’ acute and long-term care needs. In some states the number is as low as 5 per 100,000. * This is not a lack of money or resources; it is a political decision on how society allocates capital, the collective wealth produced by workers. The 800 or so US bases around the world have to be paid for some how.

All these attempts to fix capitalism, to make it do what it cannot do are futile. In the last analysis capitalism is about profits, it is about the rapacious struggle for exchange value and production and allocation of capital has to be geared to that end. Social services, caring for the sick and infirm, caring for nature, creating socially useful employment is all money out. Public services crowd out private capital and for the owner of capital it is an inefficient way to invest their precious possession.

The mass media and what are passed off as economic experts or news men and women are simply propagandists for capitalism. Public sector workers are demonized, the United States Postal Service (USPS), one of the most efficient services in the country is constantly under attack, its workers demeaned and always under threat of privatization. As it is, no matter where you live in the US you get your mail, and we live on a continent. But the private sector wants its grubby little hands on it. The first thing they’ll do if they get hold of the USPS is close some 4000 offices that will overwhelmingly harm the aged, the urban and rural poor.

For all their propaganda against public services and socialist policies, there’s no limit though when it comes to spending the taxpayers money bailing out their system when it seizes up. It’s worth mentioning that the cost of dragging capitalism from the edge of the abyss in 2008 was an immediate $700 billion relief and by some accounts, the total commitment from the government is $16.8 trillion

Back in 1989 the US Congress enacted the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act in response to the collapse of the Savings and Loan industry. The taxpayer pumped some $293.3 billion into the industry, one of the most costly and extensive government bailouts of all time. Not only that, the Resolution Trust Corp. was formed to buy 747 thrifts with total assets of $394 billion.  This government agency then threw out the worst of them and sold the surviving ones back to the same crooks that caused the problem at bargain basement prices. When the right wingers complain about immigrants and people on welfare (most people on welfare are white by the way) we need to remind them of these figures and how they were forced to pay it.

There was only one person went to jail for that. Yet our jails are full of working class and poor people many of them driven to the depths of despair and to petty crime or mental breakdown due to social alienation, lack of opportunity, homelessness and so on.

There are important lessons in life if we take the time to think about them. Most importantly delve in to history from below, the history of the struggle of the working class in this country and all those who have resisted the dehumanizing consequences of the so-called free market and whose heroic efforts have benefited all of us. The Native People are still here and with dignity despite a centuries old genocidal war against them. The descendants of African slaves are among us whose ancestors had as many rights as a tractor and they too, despite massive state repression and a racist injustice system, have never given up. And the struggles of women, gays, all specially oppressed sections of society, this understanding of history from below is crucial and inspiring. The heroic battles to build unions and win some relief from the bosses’ control of the work process from the craft unions of the 19^th century, the wars in the textile industries and taming of the industrial giants like GM through the rise of the CIO this has to be embedded in our consciousness. And restraining of the worst aspects of racism in the US Apartheid south in the Civil Rights movement, these and more are our history, so we have to understand we are a class unto ourselves with our own needs and our own collective interests. We have a lot to be proud of as US workers.

It is also imperative that we recognize that capitalism makes us sick.  The mass media that the ruling class owns tries to paint a rosy picture. Hollywood actors become millionaires helping distract us from the uncertainty of life. The constant fear in the back of our minds as the homeless encampments, tent cities grow, as the security forces murder with impunity and the jails are filled with working class youth with our brothers and sisters of color disproportionally affected. It’s not that people don’t care though, the object of the media is to convince us the poor are poor through their own mistakes.  “Better its not me” is the easy way out. “I’d do well to keep my mouth shut.”

There would have to be something wrong if you weren’t depressed at the very least living in capitalist society, an economic system that places the accumulation of capital above basic human needs. You would have to have lost your humanity to not be affected by the recent racist and xenophobic assault by the serial sexual abuser Trump on a small Somali Muslim refugee who dares to stand up for what she believes in. The world is always unstable, on the verge or war and then environmental catastrophe threatens to end life as we know it. We may think we shut this out but we don’t; we cannot but be affected by it.

Recognizing that it’s not you, it’s the system, is the first step to a healthy future like the addict that overcomes denial. I have been there.. This is difficult in that the ruling class goes through extreme measures to convince us that the system doesn’t exist. They are helped in this by the fact that there is no major social force at this point that counters the dominant ideology of capital. There is no major social force to turn to politically or that can organize resistance on the ground through mass direct action.  The heads of organized labor could provide this but they will not as they accept capitalism as the only possible form of social organization. To mobilize the potential power of their 14 million members terrifies them it can only lead to chaos from their point of view.

Being a victim, not seeing a way out, is also a major contributor to mental illness, but this will change. The US working class will be forced to move in to struggle in a serious way in the not so distant future and I believe, or my experience is, that when the working class moves in to struggle it tends to seek class allies, it tends to move to overcome the social barriers to working class unity, sexism, racism, all forms of prejudice and discrimination that are used by the ruling class to prevent this unity.

We will be forced to confront the task that history has set for us.

* “Deinstitutionalization of People with Mental Illness: Causes and Consequences” in the AMA Journal of Ethics in 2013. Quoted in linked Business Week article