Thoughts and prayers!
Mental health awareness enables class consciousness. Please don’t do this.
I think the thing being advocated here is using context, not stopping talking about issues.
Like instead of saying “you are not alone with burnout, it is something most people experience from time to time”, say " you’re not alone with burnout, it is the result of the alienation from your work and the incentive structure of our society".
After a certain point being aware just means you keep reaching the lucky 10,000 instead of actually doing anything to address the problems.
It’s like all the charities that are doing all kinds of stuff to raise awareness for whatever problem they’re championing, but hardly ever make a dent in furthering the goal of actually fixing what they’re championing.
Yes keeping people informed about mental health problems is important but the solution to the rise of the mental health crisis is “fix what’s causing so much unnecessary stress on people.” But instead we get more money dedicated for researching medicines and therapy to fix what shouldn’t have been broken in the first place.
“Raisin awareness” more often than not helps that Charity in terms of Marketing, which in turn leads to more funding.
(Finding a human interest subject, linking your company to it and taking it all the the Press as a nice pre-package piece of “today’s news” is quite a common PR strategy)
When it comes to modern Charities, generally fixing what they’re championing is at best a secondary priority to their own self-preservation as an entity.
“Deaths of despair” is a powerful concept which deserves whatever shove into the mainstream that it can be given, regardless of purity tests. Occupy had problems, but it still got people to take on the concept of “the 1%.”
Can you expand your sentences a bit? I don’t think I understand it quite yet.
Glad to. I think the more valuable story to tell people is about the thread connecting deaths of despair, and it’s the story that will be resisted. Shitty liberal tendencies will tend to tell the easier story as a way to obscure the hard one, and they’ll tell it louder if you call them out on their hypocrisy. This is not to say mental health awareness is an easier conversation at all, but the wider concept of “deaths of despair” touches it and ties it to something bigger, and is the more potent thought to leave people with.
The Occupy Wall Street movement had problems with staying on message and not making concrete demands, among other critiques folks to their left might make. However, they introduced the powerful concept that 1% of Americans control more than a third of American wealth, and the idea of “the 1%” does tremendous good and will long outlive the other conversations within that movement.
A major value of online discourse is to teach ourselves to perceive deeper threads in situations like what I’ve mentioned, and to obliterate our own blind spots when they stand in the way. That is what I was trying to say, and thank you sincerely for being an engaged discussion partner!
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Decades of experience has revealed the overwhelming majority of ‘suicide prevention’ concepts are exclusively focused and fixated on acute suicidality, which are often precisely the opposite of what’s required when dealing with chronic suicidality.
One of the most effective mechanisms, particularly for chronic suicide prevention, is to create an environment in which one can realistically and actively choose to participate in when we’re at our most vulnerable.
Obviously, the best way to treat someone who is desperate to the point that they want to die is to strip them of their rights, put them in essentially a prison, and traumatize them even more.
I went inpatient voluntarily a few months ago. When I asked to leave, they got an order to hold me. I had vape smoke blown in my face by their staff, was physically assaulted, and was placed in a woman’s ward - despite being legally male and having had surgery to that effect.
The carceral approach to suicide prevention is horrifying and helps no one.
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If people are willing to listen but not actually to address your concerns, they don’t actually care what you have to say.
I’m sorry to hear about your experience working at such a place. It’s no wonder that the industry ends up devoid of both empathy and efficacy when it actively screens out such qualities, if not in intent then in practice. For the time you were able to endure despite the impossible demands and pressure, I hope you were a ray of sunshine for those patients you were able to help.
“It’s not actually a good thing to be well adjusted in a deeply sick society”
Money implies poverty.
-Iain M Banks
Using “mental health awareness” to victim blame is a proper cunt move.
Hey! I work for a suicide line!
This is 100% accurate! Debt relief, housing, and just generally human beings not having to sacrifice their minds and bodies for basic necessities would cut down the suicide rate by tons!
Yes, but also if you have the time or inclination you can still volunteer.
The above is a list of resources like free food fridges, reproductive health and other outreach.
I like to cope by doing absolutely too much for one person, so I’ve learned to spread that around to many people! I’m fine, this is fine, 4 hours of sleep a night is totally sustainable.
