"Is it maybe underneath it all about blame?"
I think it is all about responsibility
If mental illness can be maintained to be the product of faulty chemistry or brain cells, well then the problem is located solely in the individual. The person is inherently flawed. It's wholly biological
Society is in no way responsible
BUT if you actually look at people's lives, instead of myopically focusing on the minutiae of their brains, you can clearly see mental illness is a product of something else entirely.
Beat me with a stick and you can spend all your time studying my bruises and broken bones without actually seeing what's wrong with the entire picture of my life, not just my body
Unless you look at the stick and why I was beaten and who was beating me, as long as I am blamed for the bruising, compared unfavorably to those who may not turn black and blue as easily, nothing will ever change
The trauma model of mental illness requires something of society. It makes people responsible for what is happening to and being done to their fellow human beings
It's like seeing someone who is poor and telling yourself they are starving because they are lazy, absolving yourself of any responsibility to look at the social structures that contribute to poverty or doing anything to help. You aren't expected to do anything to change the situation because you've located the problem in the person's lack of drive. Their poverty has absolutely nothing to do with you
Make mental illness a biological issue located within the individual and there is no need to examine the damage being done by the larger world
There is no responsibility to change it
I'd take what you say a step further. Because it is partly how I think of my life, my experiences and myself as well. I do play a role, but not in the way some would have it that depression or anxiety or whatever is a moral failing. More in the sense that ultimately in my life, I have to play the cards I have been dealt. That means I have to consider the dealer, the game I am in, and what I want -- the past, the players and the drama I am part of. *And* what it means for me to be depressed or anxious or whatever.
"I have to play the cards I have been dealt."
Yes, and your ability to play those cards is informed by your environment -- your upbringing, your education, your social class...
The amount of autonomy people have in choosing their 'roles' is up for debate
Therapy helps people see the game and their potential options more clearly but access to real therapy is highly restricted by economic factors
It's easier to drug the masses than empower them
All the ever-present ads for psychiatric drugs link unhappiness with biology. There are no television commercials or magazine advertisements telling the public to look at the context of their lives for answers to their unease.
Swallow a pill and all be well is the answer of the day
And as long as people believe that their emotional pain is caused by brain chemistry, they will take more and more drugs, desperate for peace in the form of a pill, distracted from the possibility of learning effective ways of playing the game you talk of in order to improve their lives and the lives of those around them
You know I agree with you -- I am no fan of the pills.
"You know I agree with you -- I am no fan of the pills."
I know 
I've been reading your blog for quite awhile now and quite like it. It is the best blog written by a therapist that I've found
I felt compelled to comment when you asked what more there was to the omnipresent biological stance.
It is a very political issue that people tend to fail to see as such
I am glad you like it.
In full agreement with Cate's thoughts on it having to do with responsibility.
Then there's the still-largely-unconscious American obsession with "fitting in" -- most Americans (of course there are exceptions, I'm only generalizing for the sake of space) love to profess individuality... as long as everyone agrees and we all watch the same shows and believe in the same God and support the same president. (I'm an American, but have lived outside of the US for eleven years now. From the viewpoint of group identification vs. individuality, it's a very, very different world in the US.) The wording about anti-depressants not working in certain people is one example of many that betrays this belief in "we're all peachy keen, except for THEM": "40 percent of people who take an anti-depressant cannot respond to the medication owing to a genetic "abnormality.""
Forty percent. "Abnormality". Since when does forty percent of humanity constitute an "abnormality"? Since when is a genetic "abnormality" determined based on receptiveness or not to a recent, *man-made* medication whose effectiveness isn't even fully understood?
Abnormality -- brought to you by Big Pharma!
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