24. Sandra Bland, Lin Kuan-Hua, and the Politics of Depression

Recently, two activists on different sides of the world succumbed to depression and chose to end their own lives. One, Sandra Bland, who was in the U.S, killed herself in jail after having been imprisoned for 3 days following a violent arrest during a routine traffic stop. Bland was about to start a new job at her alma mater, a traditionally Black college in South Texas, and had been active in the recent #BlackLivesMatter movement. The other, Lin Kuan-Hua, was a Taiwanese high school student who was active in protesting controversial textbook changes in Taiwan’s high school curriculum. Lin committed suicide in his home a few days after having been arrested and jailed, along with several others, for occupying an office of Taiwan’s Ministry of Education.

There are a lot of striking parallels between these two activists and their deaths. Both of them were clearly idealists, people who were active in the pursuit of a better world. What’s more, both of these people had faced the brutal violence of the State after attempting to take tangible, physical action to resist tyranny and oppression. For Bland, this was nothing more than refuse a request by a police officer to extinguish a cigarette following an arbitrary, and forced, traffic stop. Lin took part in a symbolic occupation of a government office to protest, among other things, the perceived white-washing of the brutal history of Taiwan’s ruling party in Taiwanese textbooks. In each of these cases, these individuals chose to take meaningful, physical action against the oppression of the society around them and were met with harsh brutality at the hands of the State. Ultimately, both of these people chose to end their own lives.

What’s interesting is that in each of these cases, the victims had a history of depression and that this depression was used as a scapegoat to justify their suicides. The argument, particularly in Bland’s case, was that her suicide was a result of her depression (defined narrowly as a chemical imbalance in the brain), and had little to do with the fact that she had been locked in a cage for 3 days after failing to unquestioningly follow the commands of a costumed man with a gun (excuse me, “police officer”). The argument from many people was that perhaps she might have killed herself anyways because she “suffered from depression.” Yes. And perhaps the moon is made out cheese (after all, you can’t REALLY know unless you go there yourself, right?) Lin too, was described by some as “troubled”, although it was never emphasized that he was clearly “troubled” by an insanely high-pressure education system that relentlessly stresses rote memorization, obedience to authority, and hierarchy over actual learning. Instead, in both of these cases, these “troubled” people were simply suffering from free floating craziness, rather the very real pain and suffering that comes with believing in and fighting for an ideal world.

The problem isn’t in believing it was their depression that caused them to take their own lives, as obviously both Bland and Lin were depressed. My point is, it’s obvious in both of these cases that the abusive treatment at the hands of the State was the ultimate catalyst in exacerbating their depression to the point where both of these young people to choose to end their lives. The problem is the assumption that depression is simply a mental illness caused by mere chemical imbalances in the brain, and is therefore basically unrelated to the life circumstances of those who suffer from it. And here we see why this view of depression and mental illness in general is so problematic, it places the blame on the “craziness” (“mental illness” is, after all, simply a PC euphemism for “crazy” in most peoples’ minds) of the individual, rather than on the circumstances that surround the depressed, the suicidal, and the mentally ill (namely the alienating, brutal circumstances imposed by Capitalism and the State). As I’ve argued before, in light of these circumstances, suicide isn’t necessarily a “crazy” choice for some people.

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Depression is political.

From a psychiatric standpoint (which is the dominant, “Establishment” understanding of mental illness), all mental illnesses are the result of chemical imbalances in the brain. Of course it’s true that brain chemistry is a factor in mental illness, but to emphasize it as the sole cause of mental illness is overly materialistic and reductionist. Isn’t it just as possible that brain chemical imbalance is a symptom of psychological stress, rather than the cause of it? Is it really effective to try and treat brain chemistry issues without attempting to look at the underlying psychological trauma that might be causing it? And while some psychiatrists treat mentally ill patients with the consideration of their individual circumstances or psychological traumas, very few, if any, take social, economic, or collective circumstances into consideration. Rather, the standard procedure is to provide (excuse me, sell) highly toxic “medicine” to solve these issues. It’s also worth noting that psychiatrists, on the whole, understand very little about how brain chemistry actually works, let alone how the toxic chemicals they prescribe function in the brain.

Again, I’m not saying that depression and other mental illnesses aren’t brain chemistry issues. But I know from experience that the best way to handle these brain chemistry issues is through proper diet, effective exercise, and most importantly, changing one’s lifestyle and doing the hard-work of exploring the deep psychological traumas and weaknesses that are the underlying cause of depression.

There is, however, something acutely political about the psychiatric method of treatment for depression. It’s not surprising that the standard method of treatment is simply to prescribe pills. Before I go on, let me emphasize that I don’t think that psychiatrists as individuals are necessarily evil or nefarious, nor are they conscious of the political implications of their actions. But as I’m about to explain, psychiatry as a whole operates to reinforce the structures of Capitalism and the State. Let me also say that I’ve experienced depression and mental illness myself. I’m intimately acquainted with the ways in which psychiatry works, having been diagnosed as bipolar following a manic/psychotic episode, and having been needlessly institutionalized for a period of 6 days (not to brag or anything).

The first problem with the standard psychiatric view of mental health is that it is fundamentally dis-empowering to patients. Ironically, as a patient there is nothing more depressing than being told that your depression is a physiological brain chemistry imbalance, that there is basically nothing you can do about other than to ingest expensive, toxic chemicals and hope that they fix the problem, and that you will need to do so for the rest of your life. Not only does this “Doctor Knows Best” attitude mimic other authoritarian relationships within Capitalism, it also mimics them by reproducing the economic incentives of these power differentials. There’s a lot more money to be made by forcing patients into a lifetime of buying pills rather than teaching them holistic, natural approaches (such as proper diet, meditation, and exercise…which are scientifically proven to help, by the way). But this natural, patient-driven approach not only threatens the profits of pharmaceutical companies, it also serves a more existential threat to systems of power simply by empowering patients and demonstrating that the power to change their lives for the better is within their own hands (and can be done pretty cheaply, to boot!). By the way, I don’t necessarily have a problem with pharmaceuticals, per se. I’m not advocating for patients to immediately go off their meds or anything like that. Rather, I’m simply stating that a pharmaceutical based approach to mental health is flawed, if not outright dangerous. But obviously, limited use of pharmaceuticals with the goal of getting off of them is, to my mind, far more acceptable.

The next problem with the psychiatric approach to mental illness is that it is fundamentally pathological. Psychiatrists, and therefore the patients they treat, are trained to see all mental health issues as fundamentally dangerous, pathological, and as phenomena that need to be eradicated as quickly as possible. Obviously, as anyone who’s suffered depression knows (and I have, so I know), depression is terrible. It’s probably one of the worst things a human being can experience. So I’m not denying that it’s an illness. But isn’t it possible that depression is a natural response to something? Are we depressed because there’s something wrong with us? Or isn’t it possible that our depression is a natural reaction to something wrong in our world, in our lives? Furthermore, isn’t it possible that depression could be beneficial if it prompts us to examine our lives and to change the aspect of our lives that are causing the depression? If we suffer from depression because our lives are boring, alienating, and lacking in the fundamental things we need as human beings, isn’t it possible that we ourselves are not to blame for our depression, but rather the circumstances that cause our lives to be so….depressing? One of my favorite thinkers, Charles Eisenstein, has written an article that takes a fundamentally different approach to depression, anxiety, and the other symptoms of what he describes as a “mutiny of the soul.”

My point is that psychiatrists rarely, if ever, view mental illness in this way. As I described my mental breakdown/psychosis to the team of “mental health professionals” assigned to me during my torturous, 6-day “psychiatric evaluation” (imprisonment), I naively assumed they were taking note of the details of my experience. Later on, I realized that they weren’t actually listening to me. Rather, they were filtering what I had to say through their pathologizing framework. What for me was a healing, transformative experience (though certainly strange and frightening) was to them nothing more than predetermined justification to check boxes on a clipboard, proving that I was “bipolar.” I don’t deny that I went into a psychotic state and that I broke with consensus reality. I don’t even deny that by the criteria of the APA checklist (which is quite subjective) that I was “correctly diagnosed” as bipolar. But it’s worth noting that simply having one manic episode is enough to diagnose somebody, for the rest of their life, as bipolar. What’s more, prior to and following the incident, I didn’t have any of the other symptoms associated with bipolar disorder, such as mood swings, etc. I’ve also healed managed to heal my depression through a vegetarian diet rich in fruits and veggies, daily yoga and meditation, and lifestyle changes (that were drastic, and included returning to my life abroad in Asia, despite the protests and worries of my family who were convinced that my “mental illness” should preclude me from the independent, adventurous lifestyle I had grown accustomed to).

Again, I don’t necessarily object to the label of bipolar, per se. My question is what is the value of assigning such a label? Just because I experienced a temporary break with consensus reality (though my own reality and experience was remarkably cohesive, if somewhat irrational), why should this condemn me to a lifetime of being labeled as “bipolar” (which is another way of saying “mentally ill” which is another way of saying “crazy”)? Does somebody who experiences a fever get a label as “fevered”, which will follow them for the rest of their lives? What’s more, how much do these pathological labels act as self-fulfilling prophecies? How many of us continue to suffer from depression or anxiety, in large part because we have been trained to view ourselves as “anxious” or “depressed”?

I know for me, it took a lot of time, effort, courage, and tears to come to the realization that what had happened to me was, in fact, healing, and that pathologizing myself as “bipolar” would do little to help my mental health in the long run. This is also true with those who suffer from schizophrenia, delusions, and other more “serious” mental health issues. By treating these potentially benign symptoms as dangerous (whose to say whether or not hearing voices is necessarily a bad thing?), they tend to actually become dangerous. Again, this isn’t because hearing voices is negative in and of itself, but because the negative associations and being labeled as ill serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy. In countries were those who hear voices aren’t ostracized or considered crazy, these manifestations are considerably more benign.

Not only does this pathological viewpoint dis-empower individual patients by removing our ability to see our mental health crises as potentially transformative, positive experiences (though certainly painful and difficult), it also serves a political end by labeling those who don’t conform to consensus reality as “crazy”. Mental health labels simply serve as another tool by the ruling class to marginalize those who resist the “consensus reality” of Industrial Capitalism. Again, this is apparent in the case of both Lin and Bland, who were labeled as “depressed” and subsequently dismissed. To State apologist, they killed themselves because they were mentally ill, not because they were reacting out of despair over the intolerable cruelty of the State, that harshly punished them for daring to act against the oppression they saw as threatening to consume their lives (and which in the end, tragically did just that).

In other words, labels of mental illness help to dismiss, discredit, and marginalize people who speak out and take action against the State. There is historical precedence for this: in the Soviet Union, political dissidents were routinely diagnosed as schizophrenic and imprisoned in mental institutions.

Finally, by treating mental illness as an individualized, self-contained chemical imbalance, psychiatrists dismiss the possibility that depression could somehow be related to the material or psychic circumstances of the patient and, therefore, the patient can do nothing about it (other than consume drugs, of course). As I argued above, depression can be thought of as a psychic response to lacking something vital in our lives. Capitalism is desperately lacking in authentic relationships, community, meaningful work, let alone material security (including housing, adequate nutrition, etc.). By blaming ourselves and our physiology for our depression, we ignore the circumstances of our lives that cause depression.

The truth is, there’s a lot we can do to help cure our depression (although it takes time, effort, and pain). Not only that, depression and mental illnesses are curable (at least in so far as they are problems). You may not be able to stop hearing voices, but I believe you can learn to utilize, appreciate, and accept those voices. And yet, most people seem to stick to the psychiatric, pill-popping, brain-chemistry, self-blaming approach to mental illness. I believe that we often do this because we find the prospect of acknowledging our true needs and desires to be deeply frightening, because we feel stuck in a machine that won’t allow us to fulfill them. Nothing could be worse than unearthing our deepest, most hidden desires and then being unable to fulfill them.

In other words, what we really want and what we really need as human beings are fundamentally unavailable to us under Capitalism and the State. We experience depression when we can no longer convince ourselves that the Status Quo is providing what we need. However, rather than acknowledge this reality, psychiatrists peddle (and we ingest) “magic pills” in the hopes that we can cure our depression without doing anything to fundamentally change our selves (let alone the system). The most maddening and disorienting part of the whole thing is that we are unable to articulate our depression in this way because the words and ways to do so are hidden from us. For a successful suburban white person who “has everything”, depression is exceptionally maddening because Capitalism does such a good job at convincing us it can meet all of our needs, so they view the nagging sense of unfulfillment as pathological. How can we possibly hope to fulfill needs that we don’t even know we have (or worse, are convinced that we’ve already met)?

The point is, until we are able to see depression and mental illness in a broader, more holistic context instead of the narrowly reductionist, physiological framework of psychiatry, we will never be able to heal from depression either as individuals or as a society. What’s more, this paradigm shift will never happen willingly on the part of psychiatrists (and the broader class of elites of whom they are part and parcel) because acknowledging the deeper realities of depression will cause us to fundamentally question the values and ideas of Capitalism, and ultimately acknowledge that the Capitalist system is failing to meet our fundamental needs as human beings, and is therefore unviable as a system of governance.

I’m not ashamed of my experiences with mental illness. I have no doubt that if, at some point in the future, I am somehow able to mount a meaningful attack on the State or Capitalism (either through words or actions) my label as “bipolar” will be used to discredit, dismiss, marginalize, and otherwise silence me. But I don’t care. What matters is whether or not my words are true, not whether I can be labelled as “sane” or “crazy.” I’m not ashamed to feel crazy in this insane world. Maybe it means that I’m sane. For me, depression simply means that I was able to feel, to have a beating human heart, in a world that doesn’t want me to. I’ll wear it like a badge of honor.