Convinced I was Just Being Lazy: Neoliberalism and Its Impact on Mental Health
By Anonymous / Winter 2020
The summer before I started high school I felt a change. Slowly but surely, I felt myself losing my appetite, my interest in my hobbies, my enjoyment of life. The days began to blur together as I lied in bed for weeks on end half-awake with a Netflix show droning on in the background, shoving chips in my mouth more out of boredom than hunger. No one intervened; my parents were out of town and my brother who was meant to be babysitting me never bothered to check up on me, so this vegetative state dragged on for weeks, or maybe months. When I began school, the steep increase in workload from middle school instantly overwhelmed me and I fell into a depressive state.
I did not recognize it for what it was. Growing up in a conservative Russian family, many subjects were taboo, so I had never heard of mental illness apart from cautionary tales – an unnamed cousin I had apparently had bulimia and it was a bad thing, and that was that. I had vaguely heard of depression and anxiety, but I couldn’t have that, I wasn’t weak like that. Convinced I was just being lazy, I worked harder in my sophomore year. Sleep was a rarity and there was more caffeine in my bloodstream than blood. I spent every waking minute studying because if I was working all day I wouldn’t have the time to be upset or worry. Unsurprisingly, this backfired.
My mental state worsened significantly over the course of my time in high school. I was plagued by ceaseless suicidal thoughts that only self-harm could keep at bay, and yet I still refused to believe that I needed help. I was convinced that I was weak to be feeling this way and that as a result, I deserved to suffer like this. Everything from the way I was raised to the way mental illness is discussed in media supported my conclusion. When I confided in a friend that I wanted to die and he informed my parents, apart from their initial shock and sadness, their reaction mainly consisted of disbelief and disapproval. Even at my most vulnerable, they could not find it in themselves to be anything but angry at me for being ridiculous and dramatic because someone like me could never be depressed. They had gone through true hardship so that I could have it good, so why was I being so ungrateful?
This is a thought that has plagued me and many others – “I was someone who “should not” have been at risk... Even still, the thoughts arose. Why?” (“Beyond a Life in the Red.”, 2019). When I attempted to explain my feelings, I felt as if I had to justify myself. I could not be upset without a reason, and yet I couldn’t find one. The shame I felt at not being able to feel grateful for the advantages I had profited from almost outweighed the negative feelings themselves.
This shame surrounding conversations about mental health only serves to stigmatize it and feed into a vicious cycle, when in reality mental illnesses are not a sign of weakness but rather a sign of a societal problem. I worried about lacking a justification for my state, but it was only because the problem was greater than myself. It lay at the heart of our society, tempting us with its seemingly meritocratic values incentivizing hard work while setting us up to fail – neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the recent resurgence of free-market capitalism as a key to economic prosperity characterized by a shift towards privatization and deregulation. It takes away the government’s power to regulate the market to ensure a free market system and places the burden of the production of public goods and services like health and education otherwise funded by tax dollars onto private corporations competing in this free market economy. While the neoliberalism approach may seem to take on a “survival of the fittest” approach to motivate competing companies to improve upon their commodities to stay in the consumers’ favor and ensure financial success, this does not actually occur. Customers are provided with the illusion of choice while a few main corporations monopolize each major industry, eliminating the possibility and need for competition, but more generally, financial success is not an effective motivator for improvement because, as corporations become more focused on their profit margin, they not only lose sight of their original goal to meet their customers’ needs and serve the people at large but they can even contribute to the steadily worsening mental health epidemic.
When profit is the sole motivation, companies will often adopt questionable ethics to increase their target audience or their involvement with their product. Just like how electronic cigarette companies were able to exploit the younger demographic’s impressionability and affinity for flavored products (“Juul Targeted Kids in Its Advertising and Told High-School Students Its e-Cigs Were 'Totally Safe,' According to Congressional Testimony.”, 2019) restart a nearly solved nicotine epidemic, social media and game companies can exploit the addictive features of their applications to keep their clients invested in the product and increase their earnings despite the overwhelming amount of research showing the adverse effects of both on mental health. On a larger scale, the privatization of public goods and services allows for corporations to profit from their customers – the general public – without actually caring for them and sends the chilling message that previously publicly funded institutions like healthcare and education are not a universal right but a privilege reserved for those who can afford it.
As a result, prices rise, debts increase, government support dries up, the people suffer and the thriving free market system is to blame. Studies show that, aside from the biological factors like hormone imbalances, societal factors greatly affect mental health, and it is increasingly obvious that that is the case here considering how widespread and commonplace mental illness is among younger generations. Emotional stability is increasingly difficult to maintain with factors such as the rise of technology diminishing social interaction, the increasing importance placed upon success in school as it also becomes disproportionately more difficult to achieve financial success even with a degree due to the current political and economic situation – and even if a person is hired, they spend their life paying off the student loan debt they accrued in going to school to qualify for their job – and perfectionist ideology permeating these generational groups. They expect more of themselves and likewise expect others to expect more of them (“Under Neoliberalism, You Can Be Your Own Tyrannical Boss.”, 2018), and not for no reason; the “free” market monopolized by the lucky few leaves little room for others to succeed.
On a personal level, neoliberalism affects people’s relationships with themselves and those around them. Educational and work circumstances become more demanding, the formula for success is more elusive than ever, and as a result, we are forced into a rat race against everyone and ourselves (“Neoliberalism Is Creating Loneliness. That's What's Wrenching Society Apart”, 2016). A study by psychologists Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill discovered “recent generations of young people perceive that others are more demanding of them, are more demanding of others, and are more demanding of themselves” (“Under Neoliberalism, You Can Be Your Own Tyrannical Boss.”, 2018) and due to this overly competitive nature plaguing this generation, there is an inherent distance between people. As George Monbiot phrases it, “Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism.” (“Neoliberalism Is Creating Loneliness. That's What's Wrenching Society Apart”, 2016). According to Emile Durkheim, the natural camaraderie people experience in primitive societies diminishes as their degree of interdependence decreases; when every opportunity is a struggle to come by, anyone vying for it becomes your competitor. This separation, or more specifically, the lack of common beliefs of values holding a group together, is called anomie.
A society experiencing a state of anomie is fundamentally vulnerable. “‘When society is strongly integrated,’ [Durkheim] wrote, ‘it keeps individuals in a state of dependency, holding them to be in its service and consequently not permitting them to dispose of themselves as they wish. Society is thus opposed to them escaping from their obligations towards it through death. … The bond that attaches them to their common purpose attaches them to life; and, in any case, the high goal towards which their gaze is turned alleviates the suffering that they feel from life’s troubles. Finally, in a coherent and vital community, there is a continual exchange of ideas and feelings from all to each and from each to all which is like mutual moral support, so that the individual, instead of being reduced to his resources only, participates in the collective energy and draws on it when his own is exhausted.’” (“American Anomie”, 2018). Without a set of common values and resources, there is nothing holding people together, and in this case, they are explicitly being pushed apart. The competitive nature of the neoliberal system sets a group up to fracture, leaving us to fill the void left by the lack of meaningful social bonds with cheap imitations – social media – or fall through the cracks. However, as many have warned, social media is closer to a caricature of real human connection and can do more harm than good: “Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do.” (“Neoliberalism Is Creating Loneliness. That's What's Wrenching Society Apart”, 2016). The connections neoliberalism and social media encourage are superficial, but in an increasingly digital world, it is difficult to keep the temptations of this poor substitute at bay, as choosing not to partake in social media can lead to the adverse effect of becoming a social outcast. Regardless of a person’s decision, they remain the slave to a society that does not serve their social needs and often fall prey to an inevitable depressive state with no easy remedy.
Considering these social and economic situations, the prospects for younger generations are grim. People are stuck in a society that systematically chips away at their chances of success all while preaching its importance for happiness and, understandable, with such little autonomy they are more likely to become depressed. Unsurprisingly, the rigid circumstances set up by neoliberalism lead to exactly that. Within those affected, men are often victims of toxic masculinity and experience additional stigma when addressing their feelings and statistically suffer more, as demonstrated by their higher suicide rates compared to women worldwide. (“Suicide Statistics”, 2019). People of color have also shown to have even more significant mental health problems due to the continued racism they suffer. Many racial and ethnic minority groups experience significantly higher levels of PTSD compared to white Americans due to the frequent and traumatic discrimination they experience throughout their lives (“Uncovering the Trauma of Racism”, 2019). The only people experiencing the benefits of neoliberalism are the few who do have autonomy and control the conditions everyone else experiences: those who control the market. As a result, they have no incentive to abolish the free market that is systematically oppressing the vast majority of Americans to benefit them.
It is then clear that it is up to us to change these conditions for the better. In a system working to tear us down, it is our responsibility to lift each other up and not allow ourselves to fall through the cracks. In a world focused on market value and squeezing the life out of everyone for the benefit of the economy, we must redefine our principles to celebrate the values important to us – “We want to live in a society where…making money is not the most important thing on people’s minds...everyone has a right to well-being and dignity...relationships are more important than money and material things...We want an economic system that…weighs human life more heavily than money.” (“The World We Want”, 2019) – our connection to other members of our group. In a society entrenched in loneliness, it is our duty to bridge the gaps by rekindling the solidarity that once united us. According to Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix, “The idea of solidarity describes the ways in which we are bound together and how we can act, in concert, to change our circumstances.” (“One for All”, 2019). To rid our society of the influences of neoliberalism we must abolish anomie to restore these bonds and, in turn, our interconnectedness, our safety net when we fall, our solidarity. As a group with a common identity, we must create the world we want. (“The World We Want”, 2019). Only as a group can we overcome this mental health epidemic, and only as a group can we heal our society and each other.
I chose to write about the effects of mental health on younger generations and society at large because of the difficulties I experienced from my own struggles with mental health to the difficulties of talking about it with friends and family to the complications I experienced in my attempts to receive adequate treatment and care. Mental health is often deemed to be less important than physical and is pushed assigned in debates concerning health care but the two are not only equally crucial to people’s wellbeing but are often closely tied. Mental health care is health care and we are experiencing an epidemic that we are barely addressing much less doing anything to solve. It is of utmost importance to destigmatize conversations concerning mental health issues to begin to treat the nation, and the first step to that is shifting the blame from the individual to the society. People who struggle with mental illness are categorized as lazy or weak when mental health is not a decision or pattern of behavior or even strictly a chemical imbalance. It is strongly affected by a person’s state and position in society, and the changes neoliberalism and free market capitalism have encouraged have only served to worsen that state for the majority of Americans for the benefit of a few. By coming together to redefine and instill into society the shared values we would like to be bound by we can address the neglect of this epidemic and dismantle the economic and social systems enabling such a widespread issue. Neoliberal ideals have held us hostage long enough; it is time for us break ourselves out and create a society that encompasses the ideals of our choosing – healthy, connected, and whole.
Works Cited
Twohig, Niall. “Beyond a Life in the Red.” The Triton, The Triton, 7 Jan. 2019.
Leskin, Paige. “Juul Targeted Kids in Its Advertising and Told High-School Students Its e-Cigs Were 'Totally Safe,' According to Congressional Testimony.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 26 July 2019.
Day, Meagan. “Under Neoliberalism, You Can Be Your Own Tyrannical Boss.” Jacobin, 22 Jan. 2018.
Monbiot, George. “Neoliberalism Is Creating Loneliness. That's What's Wrenching Society Apart | George Monbiot.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 12 Oct. 2016.
Hedges, Chris. “American Anomie.” Truthdig, 24 Sept. 2018.
“Suicide Statistics.” AFSP, 16 Apr. 2019.
“Uncovering the Trauma of Racism.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, 13 Feb. 2019.
Twohig, Niall. “The World We Want.” OB Rag, 13 Sept. 2019.
Hunt-Hendrix, Leah, and Astra Taylor. “One for All.” The New Republic, 26 Aug. 2019.