Submitted 3 weeks ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to workreform@lemmy.world
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Psychology works off of “norms.” So they don’t lock you up for believing in sky daddies and they can’t treat society’s economic system.
My therapist (who has stated she will join the revolution when it kicks off) and psychiatrist know that our system sucks ass but they have to try to help me cope with that.
But they could still explain those “norms”. A lot of people identify systemic issues as personal inadequacies because there’s been a deliberate effort to make people internalize the shortcomings of the system. I imagine it would be a sort of a cathartic release to know there’s nothing wrong with you and it’s the systemic pressures that make you feel that way.
Now that’s just the crazy talking, here have some more meds and oh by the way have you tried CBT? Let’s reframe those thoughts…
Like I can’t tell you how many times I’ve described this as gaslighting and people tell me that’s not true because medical gaslighting doesn’t exist. Oh please…
Are there any scientific studies on this? Learning about these problems does unusually not improve your situation in any meaningful way on its own, but might also lessen your willingness to deal with that system.
in my experience metal health professionals talk explicitly about the externalities that are affecting you
stabilising your life is the first step to getting better
so i think saying this is not the case is nonsense
I was never depressed until I couldn’t find a job and fell into debt and felt worthless.
I should probably just smile more or something
Blaming the individual for social problems is big business. Frank Freeway is burned out and angry from a two hour commute to a dead end job with shitty pay, mandatory weekends, high deductible health care, and draconian bosses. Meanwhile, his kid’s school funding has been cut and high prices are breaking the finances.
So Frank’s boss complains that he’s not happy-smiley at work, and sends him to a shrink who tells him he’s ungrateful, and prescribes powerful antidepressants. So, hey, the psychiatry business makes money as long as everyone blames the individual.
His boss… sends him to a shrink? What fantasy is this??
Me: I don’t want to get up and leave my house. Everything feels pointless.
My psychiatrist: want me to up your medicine?
Me: Honestly, I think I’m having a normal response to late stage capitalism. I don’t think more medicine will improve my mood.
My psychiatrist: that’s a fair assessment.
Yep, take their Soma, their blue pill, their alcohol and try to blur out the horrors. Miss most of life. Or raw dog reality and don’t feel great.
Whatever anyone does, don’t let these fuckers pretend, imply, assert or claim there is fault with you.
Sounds like a good psychiatrist. Like I think we can acknowledge the cause is valid and acknowledge you deserve to be happy and able to live.
Some say that’s denying reality, maybe it is, but humans have had to endure some really bad times. For us it is natural to be able to find something to enjoy even at the worse of times, just a biological drive to survive. Honestly I think the destruction of our normal living patterns, extended family groups interconnected forming small communities to this extremely isolated nuclear family, has absolutely trashed our natural coping mechanisms
I mean, this is patently false. Mental health professionals - especially therapists - aren’t there to “allow” or not “allow” you to talk about things. You can talk about whatever you like.
And most therapists, especially clinical social workers, are well-versed in systemic perspectives and anti-oppressive practices.
I’m a clinical social worker and a therapist, and I talk with my clients about socioeconomic factors all the time. Especially because I see a lot of people from the LGBTQIA+ community, and it’s impossible to do therapy with any marginalized community without mentioning the social aspects.
I get that there are bad therapists out there who may not do this. But still, these kind of posts just gaslight people about what therapy is really like.
Yeah feel like maybe 60-70% of my therapy sessions involve talking about socioeconomic factors behind my problems and I’ve never felt like my therapist downplayed that
Here in the UK, the far right fly those as “false” flags protecting us all, not only from those socio-economic factors, but providing the final solution as applies to blacks, browns, Jews, LGBTQ+, non-Christians etc. I am not religious, but never has it been a greater truism that the devil himself will quote scripture should it serve his purposes.
Greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people he didn’t exist.
Mental health professionals rarely allow you to talk about the socioeconomic factors too
While there are certainly going to be individual examples to the contrary, as commentary on the entire filed of psychology, this is utter bullshit. Social determinants of health are a huge part of the work.
Recently had to tell my psychiatrist that you cant reframe poverty into something positive.“But you do have x y and z don’t you?” Yhea while others have the alphabet and all the unicode charaters and we can’t get them unless we do things you can’t recommend. silence “same time in two weeks?”
I think you need a new psychiatrist
No, she’s fine, she reached out after other clients said the same thing.
Isn’t the repression of the working class the point. Make them seem stupid and irrational, to take away even more of their rights. Pretty much the main activity of psychologists.
Psychology as a tool of alienation and isolation has been called out before.
Only problem is that Scientology took it way off in the other direction, and now people read criticism of psychology as cult apologia.
L Ron Hubbard has got to be among the most interesting cult leaders in modern history. A lot of scientology dogma can be traced back to one neurosis or another he formed at some point in his life, most blatantly the Sea Org resembling a navy. He created an extraordinarily wealthy cult with sprawling lore that ruins lives and bankrupts people rather than address his issues.
A real piece of shit, but a fascinating one.
Why would they be afraid to mention the legitimate factors of a person’s depression?
I can imagine it would help to say, these things are real and we can’t change them in this room; What we can change is how we feel about them and direct those feelings to activities outside that can change the real problems. Basically help empower people to embrace activism, as a coping mechanism for their depressive problems, which are caused by the thing they can advocate against.
help empower people to embrace activism
How many psychologists do you know that help their clients unionize?
Oddly enough, the ones I know tried to start a post-graduate union during their time at university.
Since then, they do mostly research and analysis…
That’s right! One has been seeing some clients for, something I don’t remember. I could ask her about it tomorrow, during our D&D Zoom game.
Mental Health services have been deliberately degraded since the Nixon era in America to prevent any explanation on what causes or exacerbates depression and anxiety.
I knew a psychiatrist who would complain about how stupid her patients were. These were people in crisis whose problems often repeated themselves due to the environment. But as a well off boomer who never had to deal with cost of living pressures in her life, she had no concept of their life’s problems and just saw all these suffering people as idiots who don’t make good choices.
Don’t make me talk about psychiatrists, who did not inform me about the severe side effects of my medication on my sleep even when i was complaining that i had livid nightmares that stuck in my head for days, and instead just prescribed sleeping pills.
From my current standpoint, most psychiatrists should get an itchy rash on their butts that keeps them awake all night for a few years just as they kept me awake and fearing sleep.
I was in behavioral therapy for over a decade a lot of it was about how to handle finances and the way of economics now and how they impact mental health. It was a common subject and group as well.
Don’t make it out to be like there’s some kind of conspiracy that mental health professionals on a lot talk about finances.
you can sign petition to make housing affordable in europe right-to-housing.eu
If your therapist doesn’t “allow” you to talk about the systemic problems with capitalism, then you should find a new therapist asap
Yea I feel like that criticism is coming from people who have never been to therapy and want to convince themselves its beneath them
It’s not beneath me, I just don’t see how it will help when all my problems are based off my limited resources or societal issues that won’t change. What are they going to do for me besides teach me ways to cope? I’m already doing that. If I’m paying for it I want the end result to be happiness, not just coping. If some therapist showed up and offered me a freebie I might try it out but I’m not paying for it unless someone can convince me I’m wrong in my stance.
My therapist prescribed me housing security. Any suggestions on where I can get this filled?
Best we can do is prison
Yeah, actually, you should probably reach out to your local housing authority as a qualified disability giving you priority for the list.
If the priority list for subsidized housing is anything like it is here you’re still going to wait 5 years. Not on the priority list, you’ll die waiting.
I wouldn’t say “allow,” more like they won’t necessarily include it as part of the analysis/discussion unless you bring it up first. And then, they may not be well versed in discussing it or helping from that angle, even if it is brought into the picture.
Yeah, a mental health professional isn’t going to be much help with the actual issue, they are more about how to cope with it. Which is also the case when dealing with past trauma; the past is in the past and no one can change that no matter what kind of licenses they have. And while mental health professionals can do something about the system, those things have nothing to do with what their expertise is in (assuming they are the kind that has expertise and aren’t just using people’s issues to recruit or strengthen their ties to their cult and that kind doesn’t want to help you but wants their cult to join in the capitalists in exploiting you, though some do seem to believe they are helping people).
It’s a great stress relief knowing I could go a year not working and still pay the bills. Having money solves so many issues in life
That it fucking does. My anxiety level goes up and down with my checking account balance.
Unofficially its sometimes called shit life syndrome.
Mental health professionals rarely allow you to talk about the socioeconomic factors too
Good thing I can’t afford to talk to them then.
Wouldn’t it be dangerous for a therapist to say that? Because if their patients read it they will kill themselves due to it being caused by things completely outside of their individual control?
And that’s why farmers had and still have some of the highest suicide rates in the world. People feeling slightest by unjust measures outside of personal control. And in a world where we’re monopolising and slicing of pieces of a person’s control he ends up a puppet in his own life
Not at all. I am a therapist, and I discuss socioeconomic factors with my clients all the time. Just because I validate that shit sucks does not mean my client is going to kill themselves. Usually quite the opposite is true, they stop blaming themselves completely for their poor mental health.
Money might not buy happiness, but it sure as shit can help keep hopelessness at bay.
They would gladly spend more money criminaling and hiding the homeless than it would cost to house them. This is a simple fact. Those in power view homelessness as a warning of what will happen if you do not obey them. It is all part of the plan.
It is no coincidence that increased recognition for mental health conditions coincided with the gradual neoliberalization of the metropole; medicalized suicide attributes the injuries of capitalism to the body, not the system.
If the populous were more liberal I think there would be a lot less “injuries of capitalism to the body” or if it were much much more liberal at least there would be a legal avenue to assisted suicide for the elderly and sick.
Bud, Canada has that, it’s called Medical Assistance in Dying and it is literally functions as a eugenics tool since disabled people opt for it because of the insufficient social welfare support for them.
Liberalism is capitalism, BTW, despite colloquial uses of the word “liberal.” MAID was seen as “progressive,” (often synonymous with “liberal”) and its stated principles are not consistent with its function under a liberal system because that system is antithetical to valuing human life.
The National Man-Couch Love Association member who is also VP basically came out and said let the poor people die a few days ago.
We can see the trend of worse health outcomes and other quality of life regression, when people have less of the profits from their employment and basic things that reduce artificial scarcity, which workers in many countries enjoy. Death and illness of desperation, another name for artificial scarcity, is reduced by proven methods that places with them would never accept the system usa workers do. Unite for better life for all, including minorities, groups have changed over time but punching down on them or anyone is wrong and unacceptable.
Wouldn’t say impulsivity but the others could be true. That doesn’t mean they’re not caused by capitalism tho lol. You fix problems from the root not apply like idk patches or bandaids idk.
Just because I’m a paranoid, stressed out, depressed pill popping mess doesn’t mean that society… I don’t want more pills. Thank you doctor for recommending pills over revolution.
Like how they protect fossil fuel producers by coining a “climate anxiety” disease to blame victims instead.
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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