Like most people don’t like to admit this, but one of the reasons a lot of us have so many mental health issues is because we live in a world that has basically become untenable. People can’t afford basic necessities, let alone to cultivate their interests or take breaks and rest or do any of the things necessary for good mental health. People my age are wracked with debt, working at jobs they hate or studying topics they hate, living in a shitty apartment with five roommates. We live in a world that’s very hard to be healthy in. So while yeah, a lot of people obviously do have mental illnesses that would need medication no matter what, they are greatly exacerbated by these issues, and a lot of people have basically just been thrust into an eternal situational depression. So if that doesn’t change, medication is just a band-aid.
Another thing related to “we live in a world that’s very hard to be healthy in” that I think we don’t admit is that we’re surrounded by provably deleterious toxins (I’m not talking conspiracy stuff, just things scientists know for a fact that literally nobody can argue). How could anyone believe there wouldn’t be widespread mental illness when we’re surrounded by countless substances that each contribute a little bit towards an overall unhealthy state…?
For instance, my high school water fountains were explicitly found to have absurdly unsafe lead levels and I know this is only one of thousands of things I’ve been exposed to throughout my life. This is a “forest for the trees” situation IMO because while we might agree that some particular substance is dangerous (ie. lead, mercury, certain plastics, certain food additives, air pollutants, water pollutants, etc) people don’t always sit back and think “wait a minute, if all those things are bad on their own, all of them TOGETHER must have a powerful and obvious effect on society!”
And we do actually get all of them together. So the powerful and obvious effect on society must be happening as we speak.
My complete immune system meltdown occurred after moving to the US where the standards for pesticides and food preserving methods are extremely different from the regulations under the EU. It didn’t cause my illness(es), but it sure as shit hastened it along by about 10-20 years. Along with my depression and anxiety, which I’ve since learned in the last five years, a huge part of my anxiety is allergen triggered, ranging from foods to synthetic scents and air pollution, which triggers an adrenal response which, you get the picture. I know it sounds batshit, but chemical sensitivity and environmental sickness is real and it’s on the rise.
People like me with auto-immune problems, are your canary in the coal mine, please don’t let our suffering and advocacy for change go ignored. We’re not all completely crazy tin foil hatters. Promise.
Published
Gay Ryan 