UN Meeting on Human Rights in Mental Health: A Response

https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/05/un-meeting-on-human-rights-in-mental-health/

 

"highlighted a study that showed that 14-15 year old girls were depressed much more than boys, while there was no sex difference at age 11-12, likely due to pressure to conform to gender roles as they enter adolescence"
Hmm... isn't it similar to what with see with CFS? Meaning that hormone changes leading to inflammatory reactions, etc could just as likely to be responsible?

 

It's more likely that the behaviours measured for depression in adolescents are not the same in boy and girls in general. The behaviours in boys might be more likely to be put down to their 'nature' and looked on less sympathetically. From personal experience, they have less avenues that are socially accepted to explore their feelings and reveal vulnerability.

 

But also, might these things not attract different labels? Such as withdrawn boys being labelled with certain kinds of ADHD or similar, while withdrawn girls might get labelled with depression.

 

Yes, and also the fact of the social status of the child. I bet there is a big class/racial/cultural difference with the same behaviours being treated differently. There's also the problem of who is deciding what behaviour is problematic and all the biases that involves.

And on top of all that, there are a bunch of teenagers being judged, and decisions about capacity, environment, expectations etc.

 

Thanks for pointing to this article.

That's something I experienced, too, and therefore I can relate to it:

 

This seems sad to me:

 

the mention of psychosocial disabilities repeatedly should be a warning written large to everyone with a chronic illness because governments would like to wash their hands of any medical/benefits costs and consign everyone to this none medical diagnosis. once they have done this we can be scapegoated for all the economic ills of our societies just like single mothers in the 60/70/80 s .we will become further side lined abused and ignored and demonised by the right wing media just as they have done with all minority groups in the past.

 

I totally agree with you, @alktipping. I simply don't know what we can do, only combine our strengths and say out loud what's going on.

So many people seem to want to stick to the concept of "mental illness" which I can perfectly understand. I hear people say that they are afraid of "strange, dangerous people" (note that strange = different = dangerous per se) and that society has to be kept safe from them. But not only "dangerous mentally ill" people are affected by the mechanisms that shall put away "dangerous mentally ill" people; and those mechanisms can be abused. Also, we have a criminal law for people who acted criminal.

Although the desire for prevention of criminal actions is understandable, we have to be very careful with that topic; see "Minority Report" or "Preventive Strike" by Erich Fried. We also have the desire for human rights. To tell whether a person might be dangerous somewhere in future is often highly subjective and often not more than gambling. I wouldn't want to have power-loving, sadistic gamblers to decide over my life.

By the way, if it would ever be relevant, I would fight for getting into prison instead of being put into forensic psychiatry. You have much more rights in prison, and you don't have to fear torture.

Germany has a certain past; to the outside, government and people show "This mustn't happen again - see we'll avoid this happening again", in the inside you see there still seems to be this ideology of suppressing unwanted groups. What these unwanted groups and people are, this changes over time. But the underlying ideology remains the same.

For me, the UN Human Rights Comittee was always a little hope in all this disaster but they have no power. And with a chairman for women's rights from Saudi Arabia...I don't know. It's probably not a good sign.

 

I really wish they'd just say "people with mental health issues" instead of sneaking the phrase "psychosocial disabilities" in there under false pretences. Once that phrase becomes legitimised in this way it'll be redefined to mean whatever the BPS crew want it to mean.

 

Isn't it great that the government have realised how dubious the treatment of the "mentally ill" is, so their solution is to reach more people to diagnose as mentally ill.

 

"mental health" means in practice whatever political actors want it to mean.