Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

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More people are taking psychotropic drugs than ever before. It has never been more urgent to have these cruicial conversations.’ AD4E Dr James Davies, from the Departments of Psychology and Life Sciences in the University of Roehampton, London has published a book investigating the vast increase in mental health interventions since the 1980s, despite there being no clear improvement in clinical outcomes over the last four decades. And this is how we've been taught to view our emotions,' continued Richard, 'as something we can manifacture through targeted acts of consumption. When we suffer, we are not encouraged to delve down and face reality; we don't learn about what is broken in our lives and in our society. We are not taught to read, to study, to think, to struggle, to act..' instead we do what our economy wants, he insisted: we reach for the endless consumer products that falsely promise a better life for a price- the entertainment, pills, the clothes, the stuff. 'We don't manage our distress through action but through consumption.'

Sedated by James Davies | Waterstones Sedated by James Davies | Waterstones

First off, the depoliticisation of suffering has helped exonerate bad policies, environments and powerful institutions from crucial scrutiny. A most telling example has been the rapid proliferation of mental health workplace consultancies over the last 10 years. These semi-private/public companies train selected employees to identify and ‘help’ work colleagues who may be distressed and underproductive at work. What this means in practice is referring underperforming colleagues to services, that reframe worker dissatisfaction and disengagement (themselves rooted organisational and social arrangements) as mental health conditions requiring individualised interventions.About ‘A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs: The Truth About How They Work And How To Come Off Them.’ Dr Davies said, “by sedating people to the causes and solutions for their socially rooted distress – both literally and ideologically – our mental health sector has stilled the impulse for social reform, which has distracted people from the real origins of their despair and has favoured results that are primarily economic while presiding over the worst outcomes in our health care system”. Frente a esto, los gobiernos han apostado por una política de desregulación de la industria farmacéutica y un desmantelamiento de los servicios públicos, lo que ha provocado que la única respuesta asequible y asumible por tiempo y costo sea la medicalización, disparándose el consumo de antidepresivos y ansiolíticos a pesar de que se ha demostrado científicamente su ineficacia a medio-largo plazo.

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Many people believe that they wish to be more entitled and seek a more materialistic world of possession and privileges to help those with mental health problems to meet this need. But in countries where wealth is better distributed, people feel more secure and equal, less of these problems exist. We are then prescribed psychiatric drugs which the corporations who manufactured them claim to have proved will be effective. If we ask our GPs to help us withdraw from these drugs they will look to evidence provided by those same organisations that show that this can be done easily. When many patients experience extreme withdrawal effects, the doctor will suggest that is proof the drugs are still needed. They may even up the dose. James Davies is one of the most important voices on mental health in the world. This is a beautiful and deeply sane book. Everyone who’s suffering – and wants to know how to make it stop – should read it right away. ― Johann Hari, author of Lost Connections

James Davies sendiri ternyata seorang psikiater berbasis di UK. Sedated adalah buku yang ia susun untuk mengkritisi bagaimana pemerintah UK malah memperparah kondisi mental manusia di sana. In the UK 44 million people are taking anti-psychotic medicines and more people are starting antipsychotic medicines than stopping and this is leading to a wide range of concerns including frontal lobe shrinkage and greater increases in variety and depression. Robert Whittaker studies also showed that even in conditions like schizophrenia that people on medicines were more likely to have worse outcomes than those stopping early or on medicines and even with those who are not on any form of treatment. The central thesis of this book is that mental health is too "medicalized" and low-grade anxiety and depression are conceptualized as chemical imbalances within an individual's brain, rather than understandable, rational reactions to living in a very stressful world. Why would this be so? In Davies' view, the medical establishment does this because it exists in neoliberal capitalism—which is all about individual responsibility, productivity, and buying products to solve all of your problems. I have been on antidepressants continually for the last 5 years, and I do find that they help me - whether that’s a placebo effect or not, I don’t know, but I’m fairly sure that they help. That said, it does worry me how easy it is to get these drugs. When I first started taking them I had a 10 minute appointment with a doctor that didn’t know me, and I left with a prescription for fluoxetine. The appointment wasn’t long enough to go into the upheaval and trauma I’d recently experienced in my life, and I was automatically given drugs to ‘alleviate my symptoms’. Because I've never read any psychological or psychiatric literature that actually bothers to situate mental health care within the culture context in which its practice, this book was a thrill to read. Other books I've read on this subject treat mental health as separate and distinct from the socioeconomic context in which it appears. Sedated, on the other hand blends together a compelling critique of the mental health industry, politicians, drug companies, and neoliberalism.

Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health

The crux of the issue is due to a conglomeration of issues: unregulated pharmaceutical companies, doctor’s reliance on issuing anti-depressants despite no scientific evidence that they even work (in fact there is more evidence to suggest they do more damage than good in the long term), broad psychological misdiagnosis issues from doctors, a focus more on the individual being the ‘problem’ and not our modern societies and the work environments we now all work in. 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.This is an incredible book and one of the most important there is to read. t has also depressed me because I've been very much into manifestation and making your own reality. Until I became unemployed and was rejected by every job, cue in my feelings of failure because if I wanted it badly enough then I would have gotten it. Allegedly.