Grazyn wrote:imblyings wrote:That is to say, in between the chilling conclusion of grazyns post and kors links, there must be a happy medium possible for any society which achieved a minimum of people who need to seek help.
I wish "we need to improve mental healthcare" was an actual statement with an actual follow-up and not just a sentence thrown in by politicians every time there's a mass shooting to switch the focus from gun control. This isn't just an american issue, the state of mental healthcare everywhere is abysmal
Alright, here we go
"we need to improve mental healthcare"
Step 1- Understanding the causes. Some mental problems are genetic, some are socially induced. People love saying the latter and then connecting it to their political view to make their side have the high ground and then just pound the other side calling them evil. Instead, do studies to figure out how the financial system, school system, and even things like what people do cause mental health damage. I can't be arsed to look them up right now, but I can tell you the ones I've found-
1.1 Financial system and debt places large amounts of stress on individuals, financial problems are the number 1 reason for failed marriages and stress among adults. Better help for people in debt and stronger rules against predatory finance will help create a healthier society. This also includes long work hours for little money, abusive bosses at the workplace, inflation eating away your income and savings, and abusive management at work
1.2 Neurologically, children are wired to get up late and spend their energy running around. Sending them to school early in the morning and forcing them to sit still in classrooms leads to children who are unhappy. Unhappy children are less tolerant of eachother, and bully eachother more. Greater pressure is put on conforming because they're all incredibly stressed and they do not want to deal with people being different
1.3 Adding on to this, teens especially are just much more vulnerable to stress and in general do not yet have the long term foresight that people at ages 23 and up have
1.4 Repression of all kinds- If someone feels like they are being repressed for something they can not help (Gay, nerd, FOOKIN WHITE MALE, etc), then that leads to large amounts of stress and a feeling of being 'other' to the group. This actively encourages the human brain to see the rest of society not as their home and their group, but as a competing tribe. This makes violence against society and especially groups that they feel are damaging or pushing them out them a lot easier to accept for the brain. This includes divisive politics, if someone spends years hearing that they are evil, the enemy of society, and bad people, then they will have no problem with not belonging to society and doing bad things to it and people in it.
Step 2- Solve the causes
2.1 For the genetic problems, provide screening for as little as possible or even free to make sure everyone knows what they and their children are at risk of. Knowledge is power, and people can find treatment easier that way.
2.2 The previously mentioned debt help and rules against financial predators. Attempt to raise living standards and reduce the financial pressure on people. This is amusingly probably the hardest thing to do because there are people who actively encourage these things for their own benefit, and getting this resolved would mean fighting them
2.3 School system redesign to fit modern knowledge. The school system across the west originated in Prussia to teach literacy to the peasants and factory workers. While it works great for teaching this literacy, it's not intended to be used as the glorified daycare for 10+ years that it is today. But with parents each working one or even two jobs, it's going to stay in use as such. Either solve the financial problem to give parents time to help their children so the pressure is off schools, or completely redesign school using neurological knowledge to encourage actual learning and avoid undue stress. This will likely reduce bullying and school incidents by a lot.
2.4 Politics! Everyone has a problem with politicians. Everyone blames the other side. Have we considered that maybe the system is the problem? For European politics, instead of voting on just a party and then the party deciding 'haha we won, now we're going to go form a government with our arch-enemies and piss away all our talking points', there needs to be a way to vote on government and their plans, rather than just voting for a group and then hope really hard that this group does what they said they'll do. For US politics, consider an alternative vote system where you can rank candidates by preference, so if Trump vs Hillary happens, you can vote Bernie as priority 1, then Libertarian party as 2, and then whoever of the big main candidates as 3. That way, first the votes are counted, and the least popular eliminated. If in this example Bernie loses, your vote goes to Libertarians, rather than just being lost and not counting. This will give you actual choices as opposed to half the population voting Trump because they hate Hillary and the other half voting Hillary because they hate Trump
It's not much, but it would be a start. Of course you can just pour more money into research and into the medical health system, but just throwing money at it doesn't help fix things. Research can help fix things eventually and is absolutely necessary for a true long term solution, and the money will help increase capacity until we get there, but we're going to need to find a way to solve what we've already found to be sources of the bad stuff(tm) in society if we want to really fix the problem