5. | Mental Disorders – Welcome!
What does message the current rapid increase in mental disorders cases have for us? Is it a warning signal or is it merely a normal stage in the development of human society, something like teenage years?
Sociologists and psychologists have not failed to notice that many mental disorders that are quite common across the Western society are only specific for that society, and are not represented or much less frequent in less developed societies. We have been interpreting this as a warning sign – a sign that we are doing something wrong. One part of the society believes that the root causes of mental disorders can definitely be found in the deteriorated state of the environment and in our diet that has become less natural, whatever the word “natural” means for them.
There are those who believe that going back to the “natural” in everything we do – be it raw, vegan or paleo diet – would be our escape route. People tend to forget that such diets could also be classified as mental disorder, regardless what those who adhere to these beliefs think themselves. Eating disorders are a sign of an affluent society: in poor countries, where essential material needs are still not satisfied these disorders are (almost) non-existent.
Based on the above, one can clearly see that there is a budding pattern in the society – human life revolves around needs and the driving force for humans is their desire to satisfy them. This pattern was first described by Abraham Maslow who noticed that needs are hierarchical, which means that “lower” needs overshadow “higher” needs. If we have not satisfied our body’s need for nutrition for several days, then the needs for security and group affiliation are completely disregarded, let alone any interest in establishing the meaning of life.
The same also applies the other way round: satisfaction of “lower” needs triggers “higher” needs that up until now have remained unnoticed. In our everyday we are familiar with the saying that a person consists of a body, the soul and the spirit, which means that we have bodily, i.e. physiological needs, soul, i.e. psychological needs and spiritual needs. It is obvious that satisfying our physiological needs activates our psychological needs, which according to Maslow's description consist of three individual needs. The need for safety manifests itself first, but the need for love, belonging and esteem are also quick to activate.
However, looking at the press and the media in general, it is easy to see that they are dominated by lack of safety, love, belonging and esteem. Opinions challenging our worldview rock our sense of safety, and are likely to trigger attacks against any dissenting opinion from the defensive position. Issues related to the environment and climate also affect our sense of safety, making us apprehensive, first and foremost, about the future.
Having reached the next level of needs we try to behave and dress in accordance with our group affiliation (be it the punk subculture or that of climate activists) to earn love of others within that group, to avoid being cast out from a respective (Facebook) group. Many of us are prepared to do anything to be worthy of attention and recognition of other group members. One of the perfect examples of such attitude is the desire to be recognised in the Guinness Book of Records, which is hopefully covered by the media, but the same could be achieved by yelling witless statements from the highest tiers of politics – the more stupid the statement the more it attracts attention, while loyalty of other members of the group ensures recognition and love.
All this merely serves to satisfy our psychological needs. Such needs are often like black holes in space – they engulf everything. The more we try to fill them up, the larger the need becomes. Breaking an unhealthy psychological pattern could perhaps be the greatest challenge in a person’s life and – provided that the result is positive – the greatest reward as well. No conquest of a summit can be ever compared with breaking psychological constraints. Moreover, it would not be a lie to say that freeing oneself from the need to climb ever higher summits could, for a mountain-climber, be even a more significant step in life than conquering the desired summit.
Therefore, we can replace our current concerns about mental health with constructive optimism: our society has reached another level of its development pyramid, and we have every reason to be proud of this achievement and congratulate ourselves. We have reached the level of basic material prosperity, it is now time to start generating psychological wellbeing, i.e. prosperity of soul. Our problem is not actual insecurity and lack of love or recognition, but an illusion, false belief that they are missing. Treatment against an illusion is seeing through the illusion. An illusion is like a dirty window with painted flowers on it that for us seem to be flowers in the garden, even though the ground is covered with snow.
In other words, to describe this situation figuratively: when our house is on fire we are not bothered by dirty windows, we do not even notice them, although the windows are indeed really dirty. When unwashed windows start bothering us, it means that we now have a reason to congratulate ourselves – the fire has been extinguished and it is time to start washing the windows...