Is there any validity in the "Men's Movement"?

[J Ed]

Also funny that MRAs almost uniformly support neoliberal economics, which has to be the biggest cause of mental health problems for men and especially young men.

 

[8ball]

Also funny that MRAs almost uniformly support neoliberal economics, which has to be the biggest cause of mental health problems for men and especially young men.

You mean there would be almost no mental illness if we adopted Keynesian or state capitalist policies?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Also funny that MRAs almost uniformly support neoliberal economics, which has to be the biggest cause of mental health problems for men and especially young men.

Exactly. And that's how you tackle 'men's problems'. Given that as a group, men don't lack a political voice, 'men's problems' are far more closely aligned with 'society's problems' than the problems of other groups.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

You mean there would be almost no mental illness if we adopted Keynesian or state capitalist policies?

Hmm. You are something of an arbiter of clarity on this thread. It's a big statement, to be sure. However, I have quite a bit of sympathy with Laing on this. For instance, the greater incidence of mental health problems (or at least diagnoses!) among various ethnic minorities in the UK might be entirely explained by the problems of growing up black in a racist society. Laing saw the root of all mental health problems as lying in the gap between what we feel we know to be true and the contradictory messages we get from others. I think he overstated his case, but he was definitely onto something as well.

 

[8ball]

It's a big statement, to be sure. However, I have quite a bit of sympathy with Laing on this. For instance, the greater incidence of mental health problems (or at least diagnoses!) among various ethnic minorities in the UK might be entirely explained by the problems of growing up black in a racist society. Laing saw the root of all mental health problems as lying in the gap between what we feel we know to be true and the contradictory messages we get from others. I think he overstated his case, but he was definitely onto something as well.

And how does that relate to neoliberal economics particularly? <we need a 'strokes beard'* smiley>

* - plus a female equivalent, obv

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And how does that relate to neoliberal economics particularly? <we need a 'strokes beard'* smiley>

* - plus a female equivalent, obv

The economic value attached to people by society doesn't fit with the value people feel themselves to have.

 

[redsquirrel]

And how does that relate to neoliberal economics particularly? <we need a 'strokes beard'* smiley>v

Well in a strongly social democrat society those with mental health issues would have better access to treatment. Neoliberal attacks on state health services through their privatisation are hardly likely to improve people's mental health.

 

[8ball]

The economic value attached to people by society doesn't fit with the value people feel themselves to have.

Couldn't we only really fix that if we directly measured people's self-esteem minute by minute and adjusted their bank account appropriately?
I suspect that if we were to do that then we would soon find all wealth and power controlled by monomaniacal psychopaths.

Possibly to an even worse degree than we currently have.

 

[Santino]

Strongly capitalist societies are constantly reinforcing the message that it is vital to win, to be in the top echelon of society - almost by definition they are telling the majority of people that they have failed.

 

[8ball]

Well in a strongly social democrat society those with mental health issues would have better access to treatment. Neoliberal attacks on state health services through their privatisation are hardly likely to improve people's mental health.

Unfortunately it's hard to tell to what degree those policies help because those strongly social democratic societies we have are at latitudes where lots of people shoot themselves in the face due to the lack of sunlight.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Couldn't we only really fix that if we directly measured people's self-esteem minute by minute and adjusted their bank account appropriately?
I suspect that if we were to do that then we would soon find all wealth and power controlled by monomaniacal psychopaths.

Possibly to an even worse degree than we currently have.

I think for what I just said to be right, there would have to be a correlation between economic inequality and mental health problems. I've not looked into it, but it should be potentially falsifiable, I would think.

(Complicated by the problem of social mobility - economic inequality plus some kind of 'meritocracy' balls about everyone getting what they deserve - the American Dream, for instance.)

 

[J Ed]

You mean there would be almost no mental illness if we adopted Keynesian or state capitalist policies?

That's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that, as mentioned by other posters, neoliberalism has led to attacks on the services of the most vulnerable including mental health services. Plus, in order for neoliberalism to continue we tell huge numbers of people that they have to do things that are beyond their means, not because of their own lack of ability but because of the way that the economy is structured. When they fail we call them parasites.

 

[8ball]

That's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that, as mentioned by other posters, neoliberalism has led to attacks on the services of the most vulnerable including mental health services. Plus, in order for neoliberalism to continue we tell huge numbers of people that they have to do things that are beyond their means, not because of their own lack of ability but because of the way that the economy is structured. When they fail we call them parasites.

So you're not saying it's the biggest cause of mental health problems, just that it's speculatively *a* cause and that the policies deny decent treatment to a lot of people who have mental health issues?

 

[J Ed]

So you're not saying it's the biggest cause of mental health problems, just that it's speculatively *a* cause and that the policies deny decent treatment to a lot of people who have mental health issues?

I said

Also funny that MRAs almost uniformly support neoliberal economics, which has to be the biggest cause of mental health problems for men and especially young men.

I probably should have said

Also funny that MRAs almost uniformly support neoliberal economics, which has to be one of the biggest causes of mental health problems for men and especially young men.

 

[8ball]

I think for what I just said to be right, there would have to be a correlation between economic inequality and mental health problems. I've not looked into it, but it should be potentially falsifiable, I would think.

(Complicated by the problem of social mobility - economic inequality plus some kind of 'meritocracy' balls about everyone getting what they deserve - the American Dream, for instance.)

I've not read The Spirit Level - a lot of it is hotly contested but some of the conclusions make sense on an intuitive level.
But then I'm obviously left-leaning anyway so confirmation bias is a confounder and it's not my area of research...

I do find R D Laing interesting but my knowledge goes little further than a BBC 4 documentary.

 

[8ball]

II probably should have said

Also funny that MRAs almost uniformly support neoliberal economics, which has to be one of the biggest causes of mental health problems for men and especially young men.

Fair enough. Do you have anything to back that up beyond intuition?

 

[J Ed]

I've not read The Spirit Level - a lot of it is hotly contested but some of the conclusions make sense on an intuitive level.
But then I'm obviously left-leaning anyway so confirmation bias is a confounder and it's not my area of research...

I haven''t read all the criticisms but the Policy Exchange stuff is just awful.

 

[redsquirrel]

I think for what I just said to be right, there would have to be a correlation between economic inequality and mental health problems. I've not looked into it, but it should be potentially falsifiable, I would think.

(Complicated by the problem of social mobility - economic inequality plus some kind of 'meritocracy' balls about everyone getting what they deserve - the American Dream, for instance.)

I'd be immensely surprised if there wasn't. I do know Indigenous Australians are far more likely to suffer from mental health problems than non-IAs.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I've not read The Spirit Level - a lot of it is hotly contested but some of the conclusions make sense on an intuitive level.
But then I'm obviously left-leaning anyway so confirmation bias is a confounder and it's not my area of research...

I do find R D Laing interesting but my knowledge goes little further than a BBC 4 documentary.

I read a book by him that was a series of case studies of young women diagnosed schizophrenic. In each case, he produced an explanation for their 'illness' that was in effect an attempted rationalisation of the unrationalisable - the product of deep-rooted contradictions.

I don't accept his conclusions, but I think what he was doing was perhaps providing a different level of explanation from other levels, such as a genetic or biochemical one. Not invalid, but also not the whole story. tbf, this book was written in the 70s and a lot of psychiatry has moved broadly in his direction since, with a far wider acceptance, for instance, of helping a person make sense of their voices rather than just obliterating them (along with half their consciousness) with drugs.

 

[8ball]

I'd be immensely surprised if there wasn't. I do know Indigenous Australians are far more likely to suffer from mental health problems than non-IAs.

Is that because of relative poverty or absolute poverty, though?

 

[J Ed]

Fair enough. Do you have anything to back that up beyond intuition?

I don't have any academic journals or anything, no. It just seems like a pretty obvious conclusion to take from a society which scapegoats and demonises people based on their unemployent at a time of serious unemployment and underemployment and the decrease in mental healthcare provision.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Is that because of relative poverty or absolute poverty, though?

Relative poverty. The feeling that you are a refugee in your own country - that you don't even bloody have a country. And racism, being told - explicitly and implicitly - that you are inferior when you feel yourself absolutely not to be.

 

[8ball]

I haven''t read all the criticisms but the Policy Exchange stuff is just awful.

I've not read the original stuff or the criticism (if I spent less time on here I might well be much better read*).

What's wrong with the Policy Exchange stuff?


* - In my mind. In reality I'd just be really good at Tekken.

 

[8ball]

Relative poverty. The feeling that you are a refugee in your own country - that you don't even bloody have a country. And racism, being told - explicitly and implicitly - that you are inferior when you feel yourself absolutely not to be.

That sounds like the racism more than the relative income. There's also evidence showing that beyond a certain fulfilling of material needs, happiness does not really increase. Lottery winners tend to back this up (even in the cases when they don't fuck everything up). That would suggest in terms of income alone, it's the absolute rather than relative poverty that causes problems.

 

[Delroy Booth]

I don't have any academic journals or anything, no. It just seems like a pretty obvious conclusion to take from a society which scapegoats and demonises people based on their unemployent at a time of serious unemployment and underemployment and the decrease in mental healthcare provision.

Yeah this is basic stuff really, I grew up seeing a lot of men who lost their jobs in the pits and other industries in the 80's who sense of self-worth just evaporated because they could no longer fulfill the function of breadwinner, which is of course a deeply patriachal notion in itself, and then unable to get the mental health care needed to deal with this sort of issue because of neo-liberal cuts and so on. I think part of this can be explained by "patriachy damages men" after all the notion of a man being emasculated due to not earning enough money only works if we have a patriachal notion of man as the chief wage earner and head of the household, but the other part of that needs to be explained with class politics and an understanding of how neo-liberalism makes people economically redundant and then removes the safety net that they would go on rely on, along with the idea of being a parasite or scrounger etc.

Why it's almost as if gender and class intersect in some way.....

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I've not read the original stuff or the criticism (if I spent less time on here I might well be much better read*).

What's wrong with the Policy Exchange stuff?


* - In my mind. In reality I'd just be really good at Tekken.

Again, tbf to Laing, he was working at a time when lobotomies were still being performed. Yes, he overstated his case, but he was reacting to a horrendous situation. It's a bit harsh to expect him to have got everything right.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

Fair enough. Do you have anything to back that up beyond intuition?

I know you didn't ask me but I looked anyway. This seems a pretty good article that shows neo liberalism has indeed lead to increased anxiety, depression and so on. It also points out increases in narcism and personalities of that nature, which isn't wholly surprising given we live in a world of special little snow flakes pushed to the extreme to 'succeed.' When that success is not achieved it's also not surprising depression can follow.

 

[8ball]

Again, tbf to Laing, he was working at a time when lobotomies were still being performed. Yes, he overstated his case, but he was reacting to a horrendous situation. It's a bit harsh to expect him to have got everything right.

I was talking about the Spirit Level criticism rather than Laing there, but I find his ideas interesting.
There was an interesting opposing view on The Life Scientific a while back - this was an Indian Doctor who had grown up with Laing's stuff and to a certain degree a lot of culturally relativist stuff, but was finding that the experience of depression in rural India was in all salient respects the same as the experience of depression in uptown Manhattan, and was responding in the exact same way to pharmacological intervention.

I wasn't familiar with him or his work but he was an engaging personality and it was an interesting story.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I was talking about the Spirit Level criticism rather than Laing there, but I find his ideas interesting.
There was an interesting opposing view on The Life Scientific a while back - this was an Indian Doctor who had grown up with Laing's stuff and to a certain degree a lot of culturally relativist stuff, but was finding that the experience of depression in rural India was in all salient respects the same as the experience of depression in uptown Manhattan, and was responding in the exact same way to pharmacological intervention.

I wasn't familiar with him or his work but he was an engaging personality and it was an interesting story.

Yes, well that's where the different levels of explanation come in. The same chemical processes are going on in the brain, so it's not surprising that they react similarly to drugs. But the story of how the person came to reach that situation is what Laing was interested in. That most psychiatrists in his era simply didn't address this question is extraordinary, imo. It led to what was, imo, a really damaging division between the medical model and other forms of therapy. We still have that.

 

[8ball]

I know you didn't ask me but I looked anyway. This seems a pretty good article that shows neo liberalism has indeed lead to increased anxiety, depression and so on. It also points out increases in narcism and personalities of that nature, which isn't wholly surprising given we live in a world of special little snow flakes pushed to the extreme to 'succeed.' When that success is not achieved it's also not surprising depression can follow.

Increases in self-esteem and 'positive self view', interestingly...

Do you know what 'External Locus Of Control' is likely to mean? - edit: never mind, I've caught up...

So we have an increase in feeling things are outside one's control, narcissism AND Just World beliefs... this could be explained simply by a medical establishment that wants to pathologise just about everything.