According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 1 in 5 Americans are diagnosable with mental illness, higher now than in 2010 when the above lecture was recorded. Basically the US has the highest rate in the developed world.
First off from my own experience I was feeling like 1 in 3 of the people I got to know had something going on, and now I know these numbers... Do you know how fucked up a culture can get if 1 in 5 people are mentally ill (thus having a distorted sense of reality) and it's being normalized, especially by uneducated people who assume their issues are just who they are? This is a matter of life and death for the planet in my opinion.
We're talkin' multi-generational bullshit that is nigh impossible to reverse without some serious education, outreach, and prevention. I can't imagine what multi-generational prison and war-torn cultures must be like today (other than my own). We spend like 6% of the national health budget on mental health, too, and barely any of that amount on education which would probably save the majority of people suffering with mental health issues (read: bad brain health) in this country.
The World Health Organization announced Depression is globally
the leading cause of illness and lost productivity just a couple months
ago. This is no joke. We've got a massive epidemic on our hands that
goes largely unseen, ignored, or is met with disgusting cynicism. I've
had many front row seats to that kind of cynicism and how it destroys
and isolates vulnerable people even more. Oh and guess what, solving the
mental health crisis requires we solve everything with the environment
and crimes against humanity and greed, etc, because our brain health is only as good as
the health of our whole system. Things like drug use are directly linked to
inequality, and violent crime is directly linked to the environment and
food supply.
Dr Dan Siegel, who heads research at UCLA under the umbrella of "interpersonal neurobiology" states that the greatest predictor of human health is their relationships with other people, from the obvious with childhood development to the obscure with the greater patterns affecting social culture. Social health is a basic human need, especially when someone is developing. We're ALWAYS developing whether we're in control or not, and that is so very important to remember when making choices or questioning where certain choices came from. We live in an age where biological needs are shorted for social constructs, totally mucking up people's empathic and creative capacities in favor of ideological and habitual constructions.
A lot of people nowadays are just isolating and harming themselves more, and in a lot of ways they probably don't even realize, what with the haze that seems to be besetting people with the lack of mind-body connection, as well as all this anxiety in the air. Everything is normal carry on.
Dr Dan Siegel, who heads research at UCLA under the umbrella of "interpersonal neurobiology" states that the greatest predictor of human health is their relationships with other people, from the obvious with childhood development to the obscure with the greater patterns affecting social culture. Social health is a basic human need, especially when someone is developing. We're ALWAYS developing whether we're in control or not, and that is so very important to remember when making choices or questioning where certain choices came from. We live in an age where biological needs are shorted for social constructs, totally mucking up people's empathic and creative capacities in favor of ideological and habitual constructions.
A lot of people nowadays are just isolating and harming themselves more, and in a lot of ways they probably don't even realize, what with the haze that seems to be besetting people with the lack of mind-body connection, as well as all this anxiety in the air. Everything is normal carry on.
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