March 17, 2021
KATRINA BERCOV
In short: let's not confuse despair with illness.
I acknowledge that some mental health issues may have genetic or other unavoidable causes.
But Coroner Ros Fogliani blamed the recent cluster of Kimberley child suicides on 'the crushing effects of tragic intergenerational trauma'. (https://www.abc.net.au/.../kimberley-child.../10783016)
I agree with the Coroner. Calling depression an "illness", suggests a dysfunctional brain is the reason for someone’s feelings or behaviour.
BUT WHAT IF, for some of us, like those Kimberley children, depression is not simply evidence of a broken mind, but a REASONABLE AND RATIONAL REACTION to circumstance?
An isolated elderly person is "depressed" sitting alone at home 24/7 with no interests or human contact. But their "depression" is mysteriously "cured" when they move to be near family, go on regular outings and make new friends. That was never a sick brain needing a medicalized label. It was a social issue with a social solution.
A person experiencing extreme anxiety due to domestic violence, doesn't have a “chemical imbalance in the brain”. They're having a totally understandable reaction to their life circumstance. And no amount of medical or psychological treatments are going to help, until they get the hell out of there.
Before we rush to call something a sickness, maybe we should ask if their depressive symptoms are in fact an appropriate and proportional response to their life situation. What if these symptoms are actually the proof that their brain is functioning just fine?
“Mood disorders” certainly impact all corners of society.
However, there is a reason depression is more prevalent and long lasting in some postcodes than others. Could it be the grinding stress, unappealing environment and limited life options of living in poverty?
A young woman might constantly look over her shoulder when walking in the city and notice her thoughts racing and her hands shaking when she catches the night train. We might recognise anxiety, but let’s not tell her she’s sick. She's reacting to the world she lives in.
Someone who is constantly racially taunted, mistrusted and bullied commits suicide. Is it them who is has an “illness” or is it our society? Some people feel so grief struck by climate change that they can't get out of bed in the morning. A friend of mine is crying for the Great Barrier Reef, like he’s lost his best friend. Mental illness? Or a sign of one of the few minds sane and courageous enough to really face what is happening? People living in refugee centres or some of the Aboriginal communities that Coroner Fogliani examined?
They’re not sick ... their situation is. How much of people's grief, trauma and despair, do we attribute to "mental illness", because it’s easier to assume that they have a broken brain, than that we have a broken world?
I know that not all mental illness is environmental. And even for clear cases of Situational Depression, recovery can be complex and require multi-modal responses, sometimes including medication.
However, I am sure that some of what we refer to as a sickness is actually just how sane humans respond to unbearable situations. There would be something wrong with them if they weren’t depressed. We need to fix the social dysfunction which is often the underlying problem, before we continue labelling the inevitable human responses as broken.
Katrina Bercov is Human Development specialist and the director of the human development company, Evolve Events which specializes in developing people and evolving organizations. She lives in Perth Australia.
This article originally appeared in The Amnesty Review, the Official periodical of the UWA branch of Amnesty International, Issue One, April, 2019. It is reproduced in Critical Perspectives with the kind permission of the author.
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