Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

Product Information

In Britain alone, more than 20% of the adult population take a psychiatric drug in any one year. This is an increase of over 500% since 1980 and the numbers continue to grow. Yet, despite this prescription epidemic, levels of mental illness of all types have actually increased in number and severity.

Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Caused our Mental Health

We are then prescribed psychiatric drugs which the corporations who manufactured them claim to have proved will be effective. If we ask our GPs to help us withdraw from these drugs they will look to evidence provided by those same organisations that show that this can be done easily. When many patients experience extreme withdrawal effects, the doctor will suggest that is proof the drugs are still needed. They may even up the dose. Consumerism exploits our dreams, our hopes and our human vulnerabilities. And its pursuit (and promises) has orientated living to such an extent that consumption has become an endpoint for much of our activity, making it difficult to envisage a life lived outside the materialistic grind.' After talking about work, the book then goes on to discuss how the rise of these approaches are being used in educational establishments. The author begins with the rise of special educational needs. The number of people with special educational needs has doubled in 10 years since 2010. Now that number now accounts for almost 20% of all schoolchildren in education. This could be their speech, language, cognition, learning, or behavioural issues. However, the biggest increase in this number is those with a mental health problem be at anxiety, depression, ADHD and behavioural problems.This book begins by looking at how modern medicine has been such a benefit in so many areas such as treating leukaemia - once a disease that caused almost fatality and death in most children is now something that can be treated and managed and few children now die from this form of cancer. In fact in all areas of medicine, there has been great gains and successes in treating the health and well-being of others has been remarkable. However, there is one definite exception, the treatment of mental health. People with much more wealth and a higher status tend to be much less kinder in their attitude to others than people who have a low status position. The idea behind this is that people who are selfish or better paid tend to be more selfish in their approaches and behaviours to others. These ideas gave rise to a theory of materialism in that people who were more wealthy or a higher status tended to cheat more and find ways obtain things that people of low status weren't so bothered about. But people of high status and more wealth, also gave rise to a certain level of unhappiness. One example of this is that people with low status could be given the idea that they were a high status person and they then showed changes in their behaviour to seek more in the way of material goods and wealth. The main argument is that people who are wealthy tend to be more selfish but maybe that's part of why they have become wealthy. Many of these people who are obsessed by materialistic wealth goods often get something but as soon as the item has been bought they lose interest and seek something else. I generally believe that the love of money and the desire to have more and more of it is actually another kind of addiction in a similar way that someone might be addicted to heroin or gambling. I have been on antidepressants continually for the last 5 years, and I do find that they help me - whether that’s a placebo effect or not, I don’t know, but I’m fairly sure that they help. That said, it does worry me how easy it is to get these drugs. When I first started taking them I had a 10 minute appointment with a doctor that didn’t know me, and I left with a prescription for fluoxetine. The appointment wasn’t long enough to go into the upheaval and trauma I’d recently experienced in my life, and I was automatically given drugs to ‘alleviate my symptoms’. There is no evidence that these consultancies improve employee mental health. Even so, they are very popular with employers, mostly as they help control the narrative on workplace distress. By interpreting suffering as a commentary on self rather than system, they banish difficult work experiences from the domain of public discussion, placing them into the private, depoliticised domains, which effectively help shield bad environments from liability. We have seen similar dynamics occurring in job-centers, where outsourced mental health consultancies are used to ‘re-educate’ the unemployed to view unemployment as a psychological problem. Personal rather the structural change becomes the remedy, and if personal change doesn’t work, well, then it’s your fault.

How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis - LinkedIn How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis - LinkedIn

Dr Davies said, “by sedating people to the causes and solutions for their socially rooted distress – both literally and ideologically – our mental health sector has stilled the impulse for social reform, which has distracted people from the real origins of their despair, and has favoured results that are primarily economic while presiding over the worst outcomes in our health care system”. As medicalisation and commodification have occurred apace, they have also hastened the widespread depoliticisation of distress. Although we all live in a sea of social determinants that inextricably shape our experience, our mental health sector has only played theoretical lip service to the fundamentally social nature of distress. Instead, hypothesised dysfunctions that purportedly reside between our ears have become the principle target of its interventions. And this privatisation of woe has generated a culture highly advantageous to current corporate, economic and governmental arrangements. Mental health concerns have risen since 2004 by 48% with an estimated one in eight children suffering from some form of mental health condition or difficulty. Using a wealth of studies, interviews with experts, and detailed analysis, Dr James Davies argues that this is because we have fundamentally mischaracterised the problem. Rather than viewing most mental distress as an understandable reaction to wider societal problems, we have embraced a medical model which situates the problem solely within the sufferer and their brain. Our suffering is now being blamed on us, not the circumstances of our lives. We are in this way objectified as simply a tool to help the accumulation of profits for the pharmaceutical companies. It is no accident that the profits of pharmaceutical corporations have mushroomed since the 1980s. Therapy for capital’s benefitMuchas personas toman antidepresivos por la simple razón de que hay poquísimas alternativas disponibles. Nuestros servicios públicos carecen de alternativas psicosociales, como la terapia, por lo que los fármacos se convierten en la intervención más rápida y barata (aunque menos eficaz) en salud mental". I was really excited to get into this one because the subject matter really intrigued me, but I was left feeling a little bit disappointed overall. Our mental health sector has had little protection against what more powerful politico/economic interests have demanded. In countries where we have seen a doubling in psychiatric medicine used to treat mental illness we have also seen a doubling in many side-effects and health problems related to these medicines. Medicines are not necessarily the solution. Yet we are giving them out in greater numbers.

Dr James Davies publishes new book “Sedated: How Modern

Tras una investigación concienciduda sobre el estado de la salud mental en Reino Unido, Davies desmenuza con datos y evidencias de dónde viene la actual crisis de salud mental y cómo se está abordando desde los diferentes gobiernos. For these individuals, there has become an imbalance in provision, with so many offered medical interventions versus talking therapies and social psychological provision, which may better facilitate meaningful change and recovery. Dr James Davies graduated from the University of Oxford in 2006 with a PhD in social and medical anthropology. He is now a Reader in social anthropology and mental health at the University of Roehampton. Since the 1980s medications for mental health have increased by 400% with large numbers of people now on medication. But when you look at how a drug is approved there are an awful lot of flaws in the process of allowing a drug to be marketed and passed for use. For example there may be one positive clinical trial that can be accepted and submitted whilst admitting three negative trials that showed a drug not working can be excluded. It's also worth noting that on certain drug trials it might not necessarily be the best treatment but a form of treatment can be used on someone who might have a response or reaction to a far superior form of medicine. However, when these medicines are prescribed it is not for that reason but more probably to do with the fact that it has been marketed well even though the evidence is not robust and that it is also cheaper than a superior medicine which would be more effective in regards to treatment of mental health problems and conditions.

Sedated

James Davies sendiri ternyata seorang psikiater berbasis di UK. Sedated adalah buku yang ia susun untuk mengkritisi bagaimana pemerintah UK malah memperparah kondisi mental manusia di sana. Urgent and persuasive, Sedated systematically examines why this individualistic view of ‘mental illness’ has been promoted by successive governments and big business – and why it is so misplaced and dangerous.

Sedated by M James Davies | Waterstones Sedated by M James Davies | Waterstones

About ‘A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs: The Truth About How They Work And How To Come Off Them.’ Sometimes mental health services focus too much on what is wrong with someone as opposed to what happened to someone. So for example if you have an increased workload and you're not sleeping and therefore this is bringing you down and you feel a lot of stress and pressure it is often the remit of professionals to say that that person is suffering from depression rather than from an increased workload that could be managed and sorted rather than trying to manage the label of depression. Many well-being courses that are supplied by companies such as the NHS have no evidence to show that they work in regards to reducing stress and depression. If you have an increased workload for example, you find your job boring and you might have some personal problems it is totally natural to feel some signs of depression or sadness in your life but perhaps managing what it is it's bothering you might be more important than just going on the well-being course where are you practising mindfulness techniques. As already pointed out, no research shows that these kinds of courses actually support and help people and make any changes to their well-being and mental health status. James is also a psychotherapist, who started working for the NHS in 2004. He is the co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry (CEP), which is secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence. Dr James Davies publishes new book “Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis”Dr Davies said, “by sedating people to the causes and solutions for their socially rooted distress – both literally and ideologically – our mental health sector has stilled the impulse for social reform, which has distracted people from the real origins of their despair and has favoured results that are primarily economic while presiding over the worst outcomes in our health care system”. Many believed that we were being granted the freedom to grow personal wealth, giving us all the same opportunities. We adhered to the idea that this neoliberal freedom was vastly preferable to the very limited freedom of Soviet Russia. And every government since the 1980s has continued with this system, even if some did tweak it around the edges.