http://www.thewest.com.au/default.as...ontentID=35071

its an interesting perspective - that the way our economies are organised plays a role in determining overall mental health levels. Of course we can't know that this is the only factor - and the author of the article does mention the word 'multifactorial', however it is also noted that between 1997 - 2001 during a period when Australia became more committed to 'SC' the prevalence of psychological distress in ABS health surveys increased dramatically.

Of course, you would have to look at other factors that may have been in play at the time (I've racked my brains and can't think of any major social challenges that we were experiencing during that time, other than those that were introduced by government, including a shift to a more consumption oriented taxation system) and to compare how things were relative to other countries that did not have these kinds of shifts.

I also wonder what other factors may come into play - including for example the impact of religion. I have seen conflicting information on the relationship between religion and mental health. On some levels religion can be an important factor in aiding overall mental and emotional well being (the sense of certainty & belonging should never be underestimated), however religion can in some instances also drive people towards a type of neuroticism where the confines of the belief system are too narrow. Or why, for example, mental illness rates are higher in English speaking countries. Is Anglo Saxon culture inherently unhealthy?

Anyway, I do think that one of the major issues in our society is not so much the threat of external terrorists, but the breakdown of our relationships with each other. In a selfish society we have low trust, we don't support each other, in times when we may face real difficulty we won't be there for each other, and we turn our backs on the less fortunate.

thoughts anyone?

I'm sure selfish people who live in a society that do not appreciate selfishness is more likely to have problems sooner or later. But that's easily taken care of by just hanging around with those you like, and who say things you want to hear. For instance, such things as "if you earn a lot of money, by putting five thousand people off their jobs, it's nevertheless good for the economy and will improve the overall level of the workforce, and thus make it more competitive".

So what the article is describing, imo, is are countries where obvious social differences and tremendous class- splits, in reality has little or no bearing on the overall mental health. But instead where competitiveness and rapid social changes and great risk - is what causes anxiety and unpredictability, and therefore increased mental health problems.

(I'm also convinced that in certain countries a lack of TV broadcasts and frozen meals for two days straight would cause a bigger impact on the mental health statistics than a political revolution from democracy to a corporate plutocratic police state.)

Interesting article daisym!

I've seen data of this type previously. I'm wondering if it co-relates with the increasing social de-mobility found in USA, Canada, Britain & Australia? All have become less egalitarian over the last 20 years (rich got richer and middle class is shrinking).

Perhaps the social outcome of recent patterns in capitalism is to blame rather than capitalism per se.

Indeed, I'd argue that the vast majority of the economic activity that people ascribe to capitalism isn't really capitalism at all. Seems to me like 'rentier' behavior is boombing in the US economy, not capitalism.

Perhaps it is 'rentier' behavior that is driving the income inequality game and that this is driving the social insecurities that are driving the mental health numbers?

Feudal society had extremely high levels of income disparity and almost all economic wealth was based on rentier activity. Clearly rentier activity drives income disparities.

True capitalism tends to increase social mobility and decreases income disparities. This is not happening.

Capitalism can't really be to blame for the problem if it it isn't being particularly used these days. Rentierism is far, far more common (and becoming increasingly more common and more profitable). Capitalism seems to be almost in 'remission' these days.

I think it has more to do with individualism than with capitalism... although both things are linked. It is clear (imho) that england and the USA are much more individualistic than almost any other country in the world; certainly much more than continental europe and eastern asia, the other developped countries.

The logic behind my belief that strongly individualistic cultures lead to bad mental health is simple: humans are social animals; so individualistic life is unnatural and thus we're not well adapted to it. How are we not adapted to it ? Since there is less homogeneization of our mental universes in an individualistic culture, there is less control of the mass over the individual. Leading to a greater variety of personalities and of crazy people.

This is obviously just speculation - I haven't read anything on the issue. I didn't even know that there were more crazy people in the USA & england, but it fits the theory I had. One could say that the mass media compensates for the individualistic culture, but perhaps the mass media is just too superficial to change our personalities from sanity to madness.


Edit: Muspell's explanation seems good, too. Perhaps the two factors (fast change / high pressure & individualism) count.

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How can 26 %, one out of four, of the US population suffer from mental illness? Give me a break! That number seems way too far off for me to take the article seriously.

I have always been under the impression that it is more fashionable to go to psychologists in the USA than anywhere else in the world. I am also convinced that if you probe and disect your psyche, you are more likely to find mental illnesses that would otherwise - for good reasons - go unnoticed. Still, I cannot imagine that even this would account for 26 % of the population.

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You appear to be working with the outdated notion that mental illness means one is a nutter. But mental illness is as common as physical illness. It doesn't mean one is drooling on the floor in a straightjacket. One can have the equivalent of a summer cold psychologically. Anyone who is treated for things like depression, insomnia, substance abuse, ... is considered mentally ill. Just look at the sales figures for drugs such as Prozac or valium, and/or add the numbers for alcoholism and it's obvious that these figures are perfectly credible.
It is true that probing leads to the discovery of small or big problems of a psychological nature, but is that such a bad thing ? What would you prefer as a spouse/husband, an untreated alcoholic or a recovered one ?

As for the thread subject, I would suggest that the evolution of work ethics is a prime factor. People who are jobless are considered of nil value which causes them distress while people with a job are continuously expected to increase their productivity, i.e work harder and more for the same pay, merely to augment the shareholders revenue, which obviously leads to an increase of stress, in turn resulting in things like substance abuse, anxiety and insomnia.

The article in the OP does not reference the specific WHO report(s) on mental illness. I looked at a few WHO reports on mental illness. Based on the several reports I read on their site, I didn't see any that correlated capitalism (let alone selfish capitalism) with higher mental illness. One could examine the fact the that people in western nations are much more likely to seek help for mental problems, thus more problems are recorded. WHO also recognizes the need for more mental health services in many middle- and low-income countries. Thus, if the services are less, the reported incidences are less. This seems the more likely explanation for the numbers than some hypothetical correlation to new type of capitalism to justify a new term coined by the author himself.

WHO | Mental health

I also find it interesting that the author of the hypothetical correlation to a new kind capitalism failed to mention that nine out of ten countries with the highest suicide rates are in Europe.

WHO/Europe - Mental health - Home

It would have been quite helpful if the article had mentioned from which report(s) on mental illness by the WHO the new hypothesis was based. But, the article was a good promotion for Oliver James' new book outlining his hypothesis.

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Good post.

I also read through the article and was struck by this paragraph:

When I looked into it some it appears that Australia only began its National Mental Health Plan in 1992. This original plan led to a refocusing of Australia's national mental health treatment and maintenance policies away from commitment to hospitals and toward a more outpatient oriented and individually focused program. Obviously more money spent on outpatient treatment, along with more government awareness of and focus on mental health issues would lead to a wider range of help available to more people and a corresponding increase of treatment rate during the same time period.

In 1997 a review was undertaken and in 1998 a revised National Mental Health which further tailored treatment of mental illness toward the lessons learned since the previous plan was released. Australia has continued to maintain this focus on and commitment to increased and ever more effective mental health treatment.

Personally, I would suspect that this vigorous emphasis on, and emphatic commitment to, mental health treatment is probably more responsible for the rise in mental health treatment than the supposition that "Australia’s governance became more emphatically committed to SC" during that time period.

Especially since:

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Good point. It looks like Australia is following the policy of deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization was first initiated by the Kennedy administration here as an attempt to provide more humane care for the mentally ill. It has evolved into more outpatient treatment leading to more centers.Deinstitutionalization - Definition, History, Causes and consequences, Experience and adjustment

Indeed.

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Yes. I thought it sounded very far off as well..

...um.. what?

Sounds very likely to me, if you think those two will be indicators of the behaviour when the statistics peak, and not what practically causes mental illness. Or maybe it really is only a good way to predict a potential, for instance. I mean, it seems possible to suggest that no individual is as mentally healthy as someone who lives in a very safe and restricted society, with safety nets and political stability - but who believes himself or herself to be free. And I think that you only really see any problems with that once people think the scaffolding starts to rot. Not simply because social change and extreme pressure is happening - because that's, again, easily explainable as only positive. (Many people have expensive careers devoted to that subject, after all).

So, imo, while it's for instance a good measure on the health of the nation to look at the lengths people who break with the system will go to, or how a society treats it's criminals - it's a completely relative measure.

In other words, a question could probably be if we can find a particular type of society where all, or most of, the indicators for bad mental health exist at any given time in most areas of society (read: across the class divides, which of course is an absurd proposition, to think that it would not be more serious on "lower" levels of society). Such as, lack of freedom, little chance for self- realisation, difficult social conditions, unstable economy, deep political divides, sense of alienation, high criminal statistics, high murder rates, no engagement in society, no sense of empowerment, etc.

So, I guess - if you're going to have class divides, you have to have more serfs, and less feudal lords and farmers.

They'll have to define what they mean by "mental illness." If they include "anxiety," then I think this is a fairly worthless study.

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Silly me. I assumed that folks actually read the article in the OP. Here, we’ll make it easier and I will paste the pertinent passages that will explain my statement. This way, folks won’t have to read the whole article from the OP:

From paragraph 1: Oliver James is the one proposing this hypothesis.

From paragraph 3: Oliver James bases his hypothesis on WHO studies. Yet the specific studies are not mentioned. WHO publishes many studies.

And, I do apologize, the information about James’ book he published this year, Affluenza - How to be successful and stay sane, Vermilion, 2007, was only casually mentioned in the article.

This OP article is a nice promotion for his book.

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Seems they refer to people who are treated in some way. In the sense that they incur a cost to society in the form of lost workdays and treatment.

The study itself doesn't delve into the psychological depths of a nation's soul to come up with how, for instance, laissez faire capitalism drives people mad, or something. Which it seems is a debatable point on it's own, I guess, considering the state of the world at the moment. And that someone already started to oppose the argument in the thread before it was made.

It is interesting that the fact that people are pointing out other factors that could be significant, too, is interpreted as "opposing" the argument rather than as an analysis.

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I am an American. That's the way most of us put it, just matter of factly. They are plain words, those four: you could write them on your thumbnail, or sweep them clear across this bright autumn sky. But remember too, that they are more than just words. They are a way of life. So whenever you speak them; speak them firmly, speak them proudly, speak them gratefully. I am an American. ...a tradition