Mental health

Unwell women

Elinor Cleghorn , author of Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World , reflects on witch trials, birth control and fainting couches. Elinor spoke to Justine Canady. In your book you tell the story of Anne Greene, who had a stillbirth and was put on trial in 1650 for “Destroying and Murdering Bastard Children”. This would have been during the most intense stages of the witch trials. How should feminists understand this historical period? The crossover between feminist history and the feminist health movement in the 1970s really reinvigorated attention around the...

Capitalist “s/v” and mental health

Ludwig Wittgenstein was the most famous philosopher of the 20th century. In his 30s, after getting out his only finished book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , he worked for several years as a primary school teacher in a remote village in Austria. He fled teaching in 1926 because he had repeatedly beaten a student about the head, and the student collapsed. The village people were used to teachers hitting small children, but this was too much. A formal complaint failed, but Wittgenstein had quit anyway (and ten years later would return to the village to apologise). Teachers are now banned from...

Children, capitalism and communism

A string of reports on soaring mental illness among teenagers (and of increasing suicides, confirming there is more to it than just increased reporting of trouble). A spate of revolts by school students in England, mainly against uniform and toilet rules. The advance of technology and capital’s increasing demand for a generally-educated workforce has brought some advances for children and teenagers. In the broad sweep of history, it’s not so long since, even in richer capitalist countries, children mostly had pretty much no space to themselves at home, and socialised mainly on the street (or...

How antidepressants can help

The first sentence of Martin Thomas’s article, "How capitalism makes distress" ( Solidarity 659), could be a case study in how socialists shouldn’t write about medications: “Around 10% of people in richer capitalist countries are on antidepressants, though they usually do no better than placebo ” (emphasis added). Martin’s ham-fisted side comment — the second clause — in an otherwise good article, is both false and — despite intentions — dismissive. The article Martin cites itself states that they are “slightly more effective than a placebo” for “most people”, and cites a study that “for 15%...

How capitalism makes distress

Around 10% of people in richer capitalist countries are on antidepressants , though they usually do no better than placebo. Almost certainly the recent rise in young people with mental illness is a real rise, not just a result of there being less stigma about reporting. Previous modes of production where low technology meant that poverty in food and other basics was more generalised than today probably also had more mental distress. In French the word for poverty, misère , is directly connected to the word miserable ; in German, elend can mean either poor or miserable. In medieval Europe, the...

Women's Fightback: Mental-health pill-popping escalates

The number of people in the UK prescribed drugs to reduce anxiety is rising, driven by major increases among women and young adults, new research shows. Women are more than twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with anxiety and prescribed antidepressants or other medication to relieve its symptoms. Use of anti-anxiety medication was steady between 2003 and 2008 but then began rising the year of the financial crash. From 2008 to 2018 new prescriptions issued for anxiety rose from 25 or 26 per 1,000 person years at risk — a measure of the prevalence of anxiety — to 43.6. The study found that...

The poison in the prison system

Currently 79,412 people are in UK prisons. That is over twice as many, per population , as the Netherlands, Norway, or Finland, though only one-fifth the rate of the USA. The number is likely to increase with an increase in the sentencing powers of magistrates’ courts and laws such as the Police and Crime Bill that will criminalise more people. The government aims to imprison more people and new prisons are currently being planned. The media and government portray prisoners as monstrous people. We are told that the purpose of prisons is to lock up dangerous people, to keep us safe that prisons...

Abolish GCSEs, turn the tide on toxic testing

Over the last ten years Workers’ Liberty school workers have been at the forefront of pushing the debate about testing in schools in the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and in its successor the National Education Union (NEU). In 2019 we wrote a motion passed at the NEU’s national conference which committed the union to an indicative ballot of members to boycott the statutory tests in primary schools. The ballot result was strong, but sadly not built upon. Last year, we wrote a motion, passed with amendments, that committed the union to call for the abolition of GCSEs. On 23 October Joint...

Open the door for Afghan refugees!

Imagine fleeing a blood- soaked, misogynistic, racist dictatorship, being promised a new life in a safe country — and then having those who promised it lock you up, deny you basic rights and refuse to tell you what happens next. That is what is happening to the Afghan refugees “welcomed” by the UK. The name of the government’s resettlement programme, “Operation Warm Welcome”, is a sick joke.The Guardian reports that conditions for the refugees are so bad that many have started saying they want to go back. 7,000 Afghan refugees are stuck in hotels, with Home Office officials saying they may be...

A win for teenagers' rights

The Court of Appeal have overruled the Bell v Tavistock judgement. This is good news for young trans people under 18. It means that they are no longer legally obliged to get permission from the court to receive puberty blockers. It is also good news for other young people whose ability to make choices about medical treatments rests on “Gillick competency”. “Gillick competency” is based on a legal case in 1985 in which Victoria Gillick was defeated in her attempt to rescind NHS guidance which allowed under 18s to access contraception without parental approval. The original Bell v Tavistock...

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