Social Science Weekly: Is Mental Health the New Civil Rights Front?

Mental health continues to serve as a basis for discrimination and maltreatment in American politics and popular culture. This, despite the fact a person in their neurological makeup and environment, is no less hostage to circumstances than anyone else. We all hopelessly ride the tails of a particular genealogy, captive to the mercies of the sheerest accidents and windfalls of history. 

Along these lines, I reason that mental health is no less a legitimate front for civil rights than race or sexuality. But, I sense a deep void in public discourse, with much worth saying having gone unsaid. More could be done to consider mental health and disability-statuses as legitimate spheres for social progress and the pursuit of civil rights.

We should be asking ourselves how politicians of the authoritarian populist movement, such as President Donald Trump, can escape cancellation. In his case, he viciously mocked a reporter with a disability by crudely imitating his posture and voice. It was Serge Kovaleski, whose arthrogryposis impairs much of his upper-body movement.

Mental health is the new civil rights front, and the “psychophobic” religious right has again made itself the enemy. Trump could not be more crass, or more representative of his voters, in this regard. After all, it’s from religious Republicans that we get the “just-suck-it-up” theory for major depressive disorder, the “turn-to-Jesus” answer for anxiety and so on. 

John Piper, a stadium-superstar of Christian preaching, advises people suffering from depression to seek Jesus first before turning to medicine or therapy. “What I would say to the depressed person is, there will be, if they’re born again, a seed of contentment,” whatever that means. At least he acknowledges that therapy and medicine have their place — just after Jesus gets his. 

In a newsletter to readers and donors, televangelist and bestselling author Joel Osteen wrote on the topic of depression, “But just because we feel those emotions doesn’t mean we have to stay there and give in to them; we can shake it off and move forward in faith relying on God’s strength.”

He goes on to add, “Don’t give into your emotions and let them keep you from God’s blessings and promotion. Start choosing to live each day in God’s peace. Decide that you’re going to have a great day.” 

This is as straightforward an example of victim-blaming as I could imagine. There is something genuinely sinister lurking here. If I don’t feel okay, and it is a choice, then it’s my fault. 

I’ve saved the worst example for last. Rick Warren, author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” with over 32,000,000 copies sold, has become famous for his slogan, “You are as happy as you choose to be.” 

Tragically, his son Matthew Warren committed suicide as a result of severe depression. But this hasn’t stopped him from promoting that idea. Did Matthew choose to be fatally unhappy, then?

If those notions don’t terrify you, then you haven’t taken the time to appreciate that this is just one of the more visible examples of the consequences. 

Laudable efforts have been made to crack down on “gay conversion camps” and get the word out to people in the American South that they’re “born this way,” “it’s not your fault and nothing to be ashamed of anyway” and so on. Liberals, such as myself, may be overwhelmed by empathy as we imagine the LGBTQ community’s experiences there. 

But, when was the last time you thought about depressives being told to “shake it off” (with the implication that if they don’t, they must not love God and suffer from moral flaws), or of anxiety-disordered adolescents being taken advantage of at the altar? 

What good do you think it does to the schizophrenic when they are told they’ve welcomed demons into their minds, harboring perhaps even Satan himself, as my AP Psychology teacher insisted to us during a lesson?

Clinical psychology terms have been bastardized into ammunition for cheap jokes and spiteful political jabs, like “psycho,” “crackbrained” and more. How have yesterday’s tragedies become today’s cudgels? How have terms that come from suffering, struggle and striving become fit for political one-upmanship and offhand cracks? 

To take “retarded” from the gentle hands of medicine to solicit a reaction will only stun a crowd into horrified silence and calls for the literal cancellation of a career. Even in private conversation, the label holds the power to scandalize and bewilder. 

This is to say nothing of the indignation that meets anyone who co-opts sexual, racial or gender-related epithets from the rightful hands for entertainment. I find it, even now, somehow acceptable to use “retarded” in a purely academic sense but cannot bring myself to write “the ‘n-’ word,” which has nothing short of a radioactive aura. 

Why? I have no idea. Even now, I’m guilty of a double standard — and so are you. 

And that’s my point. Where is the crackdown on language with respect to mental health? Where is the widespread consensus that the mentally-ill suffered wrongs on an institutional scale throughout history, and that these wrongs persist as legacies today? 

Where is the Herculean push to prevent people from isolating, shunning and other forms of social venom? Where is the call for reparations? 

Indeed, there exists a disdainful aversion — it is no exaggeration to even call it a phobia — that has targeted people who are victims of their own minds. Would it be any exaggeration to say schizophrenia is the modern leprosy, particularly considering its profound connection to homelessness? 

If you want to honor your commitment to equality in other spheres, avoid what I am calling “psychophobia.” Refuse to participate in what is prejudiced, discriminatory, systemic and institutionalized degradation, abuse and belittlement of medicine and of the mentally ill. They are among the most vulnerable and misunderstood people in our society and they deserve a seat at the table.